CHAPTER II.
ANABAPTISM.[602]
The old monotonous mode of describing Anabaptism has almost entirely disappeared with the modern careful examination of sources. It is no longer possible to sum up the movement in four stages, beginning with the Zwickau prophets and ending with the catastrophe in Münster, or to explain its origin by calling it the radical side of the Reformation movement.[603] It is acknowledged by careful students to have been a very complicated affair, to have had roots buried in the previous centuries, and to have had men among its leaders who were distinguished Humanists. It is now known that it spread over Europe with great rapidity, and attracted to itself an enormously larger number of adherents than had been imagined.
It is impossible within the limits of one brief chapter to state and criticise the various theories of the origin and roots of the movement which modern investigation has suggested. All that can be done is to set down succinctly the conclusions reached after a tolerably wide examination of the sources—admitting at the same time that more information must be obtained ere the history of the movement advances beyond the controversial stage.
It is neither safe nor easy to make abrupt general statements about the causes or character of great popular movements. The elements which combine to bring them into being and keep them in existence are commonly as innumerable as the hues which blend in the colour of a mountain side. Anabaptism was such a complicated movement that it presents peculiar difficulties. As has been said, it had a distinct relation to two different streams of mediæval life, the one social and the other religious—the revolts of peasants and artisans, and the successions of the Brethren.
From the third quarter of the fifteenth century social uprisings had taken place almost every decade, all of them more or less impregnated with crude religious beliefs. They were part of the intellectual and moral atmosphere that the “common man,” whether in town or country district, continuously breathed, and their power over him must not be lost sight of. The Reformation movement quickened and strengthened these influences simply because it set all things in motion. It is not possible, therefore, to draw a rigid line of separation between some sides of the Anabaptist movement and the social revolt; and hence it is that there is at least a grain of truth in the conception that the Anabaptists were the revolutionaries of the times of the Reformation.
On the other hand, there are good reasons for asserting that the distinctively religious side of Anabaptism had little to do with the anarchic outbreaks. It comes in direct succession from those communities of pious Christians who, on the testimony of their enemies, lived quiet God-fearing lives, and believed all the articles in the Apostles’ Creed; but who were strongly anti-clerical. They lived unobtrusively, and rarely appear in history save when the chronicle of some town makes casual mention of their existence, or when an Inquisitor ferreted them out and records their so-called heresies. Their objections to the constitution and ceremonies of the mediæval Church were exactly those of the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century; and if we do not find a universal repudiation of infant baptism, there are traces that some did not approve of it. They insisted that the service ought to be in the vulgar tongue; they objected to all the Church festivals; to all blessing of buildings, crosses, and candles; they alleged that Christ did not give His Apostles stoles or chasubles; they scoffed at excommunications, Indulgences, and dispensations; they declared that there was no regenerative efficacy in infant baptism; and they were keenly alive to all the injunctions of Christian charity—it was better, they said, to clothe the poor than to expend money on costly vestments or to adorn the walls of Churches, and they kept up schools and hospitals for lepers. They met in each other’s houses for public worship, which took the form of reading and commenting upon the Holy Scriptures.[604]
As we are dependent on very casual sources of information, it is not surprising that we cannot trace their continuous descent down to the period of the Reformation; but we do find in the earlier decades of the sixteenth century notices of the existence of small praying communities, which have all the characteristics of those recorded in the Inquisitors’ reports belonging to the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth centuries. They appeared in Basel in 1514, in Switzerland in 1515, in Mainz in 1518, and in Augsburg somewhat earlier.[605] By the year 1524 similar “praying circles” were recorded as existing in France, in the Netherlands, in Italy, in Saxony, in Franconia, at Strassburg, and in Bohemia. They used a common catechism for the instruction of their young people which was printed in French, German, Bohemian, and perhaps Italian. In Germany, the Bible was the German Vulgate—a version retained among the Anabaptists long after the publication of Luther’s. They exhibited great zeal in printing and distributing the pious literature of the Friends of God of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Many of them taught Baptist views, though the tenets were not universally accepted, and they were already called Anabaptists or Katabaptists—a term of reproach. Some of their more distinguished leaders were pious Humanists, and their influence may perhaps be seen in the efforts made by the Brethren to print and distribute the Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua.
This quiet Evangelical movement assumed a more definite form in 1524. Before that date the associations of pious people acted like the Pietists of the seventeenth or like the Wesleyans of the eighteenth century. They associated together for mutual edification; they did not obtrusively separate themselves from the corrupt or slothful Church. But in June 1524, delegates representing a very wide circle of “praying assemblies” or Readings met at Waldshut, in the house of Balthasar Hübmaier,[606] bringing their Bibles with them, to consult how to organise their Christian living on the lines laid down in the New Testament. No regular ecclesiastical organisation was formed. The Brethren resolved to separate from the Papal Church; they published a Directory for Christian living, and drew up a statement of principles in which they believed. Amongst other things, they protested against any miraculous efficacy in the Sacraments in general, and held that Baptism is efficacious only when it is received in faith. This led afterwards to the adoption of Baptist views. A second conference was held at Augsburg in 1526, which probably dates the time when adult baptism became a distinctive belief among all the Brethren. This conference suggested a General Synod which met at Augsburg in 1527 (Aug.), and included among its members, delegates from Munich, Franconia, Ingolstadt, Upper Austria, Styria, and Switzerland. There they drew up a statement of doctrinal truth, which is very simple, and corresponds intimately with what is now taught among the Moravian Brethren. Their Hymn-book[607] does not bear any traces of the errors in doctrine usually attributed to them. Its chief theme is the love of God awakening our love to God and to our fellow-men. Instead of infant baptism they had a ceremony in which the children were consecrated to God. Baptism was regarded as the sign of conversion and of definite resolve to give one’s self up to the worship and service of God. It was administered by sprinkling; the recipient knelt to receive it in the presence of the congregation. The Holy Supper was administered at stated times, and always after one or two days of solemn preparation. Their office-bearers were deacons, elders, masters and teachers, or pastors. They distinguished between pastors who were wandering evangelists and those who were attached to single congregations. The latter, who were ordained by the laying on of hands, alone had the right to dispense the Sacraments. All the deacons, elders, and pastors belonging to communities within a prescribed district, selected from among themselves delegates who formed their ecclesiastical council for the district, and this council elected one of the pastors to act as Bishop or Superintendent. It was the Superintendent who ordained by laying on of hands. The whole of the Brethren were governed ecclesiastically by a series of Synods corresponding to those in the Presbyterian Churches. This organisation enabled the Anabaptists to endure the frightful persecution which they were soon to experience at the hands of the papal and Lutheran State Churches.
The chief leaders were Balthasar Hübmaier and Hans Denck. Hübmaier was a distinguished scholar. He became, at an unusually early age, Professor of theology at Ingolstadt (1512); he was Rector of the famous High School in that city (1515); and Cathedral preacher at Regensburg (Ratisbon) (1516). In 1519, feeling that he could no longer conscientiously occupy such positions, he retired to the little town of Waldshut. Hans Denck was a noted Humanist, a member of the “Erasmus circle” at Basel, and esteemed the most accurate Greek scholar in the learned community. Conrad Grebel, another well-known Anabaptist leader, also belonged to the “Erasmus circle,” and was a member of one of the patrician families of Zurich. Like Hübmaier and Denck, he gave up all to become an evangelist, and spent his life on long preaching tours. These facts are sufficient to refute the common statement that the Anabaptists were ignorant fanatics.
Perhaps Denck was the most widely known and highly esteemed. In the summer of 1523 he was appointed Rector of the celebrated Sebaldus School in Nürnberg. In the end of 1524 he was charged with heresy, and along with him Jörg Penz, the artist, the favourite pupil of Albert Dürer, and four others. Denck was banished from the city, and his name became well known. This trial and sentence was the occasion of his beginning that life of wandering evangelist which had among other results the conferences in 1526 and 1527, and the organisation above described. Denck had drunk deeply at the well of the fourteenth and fifteenth century Mystics, and his teaching was tinged by many of their ideas. He believed that there was a spark of the divine nature in man, an Inner Word, which urged man to walk in the ways of God, and that man could always keep true to the inward monitor, who was none else than Christ. The accounts given of some of his addresses seem to be echoes of Tauler’s famous sermon on the Bridegroom and the Bride, for he taught that the sufferings of the faithful are to be looked upon as the love-gifts of the Saviour, and are neither to be mourned nor resisted. We are told in the quaint Chronicle of Sebastian Frauck, that the Baptist current swept swiftly through the whole land; many thousands were baptized, and many hearts drawn to them. “For they taught nothing but love, faith, and crucifixion of the flesh, manifesting patience and humility under many sufferings, breaking bread with one another in sign of unity and love, helping one another with true helpfulness, lending, borrowing, giving, learning to have all things in common, calling each other ‘brother.’”[608] He adds that they were accused of many things of which they were innocent, and were treated very tyrannically.
The Anabaptists, like the earlier Mystics, displayed a strong individuality; and this makes it impossible to classify their tenets in a body of doctrine which can be held to express the system of intellectual belief which lay at the basis of the whole movement. We have three contemporary accounts which show the divergence of opinion among them—two from hostile and one from a sympathetic historian. Bullinger[609] attempts a classification of their different divisions, and mentions thirteen distinct sects within the Anabaptist circle; but they manifestly overlap in such a way as to suggest a very large amount of difference which cannot be distinctly tabulated. Sebastian Franck[610] notes all the varieties of views which Bullinger mentions, but refrains from any classification. “There are,” he says, “more sects and opinions, which I do not know and cannot describe, but it appears to me that there are not two to be found who agree with each other on all points.” Kessler,[611] who recounts the story of the Anabaptists of St. Gallen, notes the same great variety of opinions.
It is quite possible to describe the leading ideas taught by a few noted men and approved of by their immediate circle of followers, and so to arrive with some accuracy at the popularity of certain leading principles among different parties, but it must be remembered that no great leader imposed his opinions on the whole Anabaptist circle, and that the views held at different times by prominent men were not invariably the sentiments which lay at the basis of the whole movement.
The doctrine of passive resistance was held by almost all the earlier Anabaptists, but it was taught and practised in such a great variety of ways that a merely general statement gives a misleading idea. All the earlier Anabaptists believed that it was unchristian to return evil for evil, and that they should take the persecutions which came to them without attempting to retaliate. Some, like the young Humanist, Hans Denck, pushed the theory so far that they believed that no real Christian could be either a magistrate or a soldier. A small band of Anabaptists, to whom one of the Counts of Liechtenstein had given shelter at Nikolsburg, told their protector plainly that they utterly disapproved of his threatening the Austrian Commissary with armed resistance if he entered the Nikolsburg territory to seize them. In short, what is called “passive resistance” took any number of forms, from the ordinary Christian maxim to be patient under tribulation, to that inculcated and practised by the modern sect of Dunkers.
The followers of Melchior Hoffman, called “Melchiorites,” held apocalyptic or millenarian views, and expected in the near future the return of Christ to reign over His saints; but there is no reason to suppose that this conception was very widely adopted, still less that it can be called a tenet of Anabaptism in general. All the Anabaptists inculcated the duty of charity and the claims of the poor on the richer members of the community; but that is a common Christian precept, and does not necessarily imply communistic theories or practices. All that can be definitely said of the whole Anabaptist circle was that they did keep very clearly before them the obligations of Christian love. The so-called Communism in Münster will be described later.
When we examine carefully the incidental records of contemporary witnesses observing their Anabaptist neighbours, we reach the general conclusion that their main thought was to reproduce in their own lives what seemed to them to be the beliefs, usages, and social practices of the primitive Christians. Translations of the Bible and of parts of it had been common enough in Germany before Luther’s days. The “common man,” especially the artisan of the towns, knew a great deal about the Bible. It was the one book he read, re-read, and pondered over. Fired with the thoughts created in his mind by its perusal, simple men felt impelled to become itinerant preachers. The “call” came to them, and they responded at once to what they believed to be the divine voice. Witness Hans Ber of Alten-Erlangen, a poor peasant. He rose from his bed one night and suddenly began to put on his clothes. “Whither goest thou?” asked his poor wife. “I know not; God knoweth,” he answered. “What evil have I done thee? Stay and help me to bring up my little children,” “Dear wife,” he answered, “trouble me not with the things of time. I must away, that I may learn the will of the Lord.”[612] Such men wandered about in rude homespun garments, often barefooted, their heads covered with rough felt hats. They craved hospitality in houses, and after supper produced their portions of the Bible, read and expounded, then vanished in the early morning. We are told how Hans Hut came to the house of Franz Strigel at Weier in Franconia, produced his Bible, read and expounded, explained the necessity of adult baptism, convinced Strigel, the house father, and eight others, and baptized them there and then. He wandered forth the same night. None of the baptized saw him again; but the little community remained—a small band of Anabaptists.[613]
These wandering preachers, “prophets” they may be called if we give them the early Christian name, were not drilled in any common set of opinions. Each conceived the primitive teaching and social life as he seemed to see it reflected in the New Testament; and no two conceptions were exactly the same. The circumstances and surroundings produced an infinite variety of thought about the doctrines and usages which ought to be accepted and practised. Yet they had traditional modes of interpretation handed down to them from the praying circles of the “Brethren.” Compare what the Austrian Inquisitor says of the “Brethren” in the thirteenth century, with what Johann Kessler tells about the Anabaptists of St. Gallen, and the resemblance is striking so far as external appearance goes. “Hæretici cognoscuntur per mores et verba,” says the Inquisitor. “Sunt enim in moribus compositi et modesti; superbiam in vestibus non habent, nec pretiosis, nec multum abjectis utuntur.... Doctores etiam ipsorum sunt sutores et textores. Divitias non multiplicant, sed necessariis sunt contenti. Casti etiam sunt.... Temperati etiam in cibo et potu. Ad tabernas non eunt, nec ad choreas, nec ad alias vanitates. Ab ira se cohibent; semper operantur, discunt vel docent, et ideo parum orant.... Cognoscuntur etiam in verbis præcisis et modestis. Cavent etiam a scurrilitate et detractione, et verborum levitate, et mendacio, et juramento.”[614] Kessler tells us that the walk and conversation of these Anabaptists was “throughout pious, holy, and blameless”; that they refrained from wearing costly apparel, despised luxurious eating and drinking, clothed themselves in rough cloth, wore slouch hats on their heads. Franck relates that they refused to frequent wine-shops and the “gild” rooms where dances were held.
As they lived again the life of these mediæval sectaries, so they reproduced their opinions in the same sporadic way. Some of them objected to all war even in self-defence, as did some of the earlier Lollards. Their Lord had said to His first disciples: “Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs in the midst of wolves.” They flung from them the sword, with which peasant and artisan were then alike girt, and went about as the apostles were ordered to do, with staves in their hands—the Stäbler or staffmen who would have nothing to do with the weapons of wolves. Others, also like some of the Lollards, would not enter the “huge stone houses with great glass windows which men called ‘churches.’” The early Christians had preached and “broken bread” in houses; and they would follow their example; and in private rooms, in the streets, in the market-places, they proclaimed their gospel of peace and contentment. The infinitesimal number who taught something like “free love,” and who were repudiated by the others, were reproducing the vagaries of the mediæval Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, who gave Meister Eckhart so much trouble centuries before in the Rhineland. All the more extravagant ideas and practices which appear among small sections of these Anabaptists of the sixteenth century can be found among the sectaries of the Middle Ages. For the whole Anabaptist movement was mediæval to the core; and, like most of the mediæval religious awakenings, produced an infinite variety of opinions and practices. The one idea common to all was, that the Christians of the sixteenth century were called to reproduce in thought and life the intellectual beliefs and usages of the primitive Christians. It is simply impossible to give any account of opinions and practices which were universally prevalent among them. Even the most widely spread usages, adult baptism and the “breaking of bread,” were not adopted in all the divisions of the Anabaptists.
What is more, they were modern enough, at least in the earlier stages of the movement, to be conscious of this (which the Mystics were not), and to give it expression. All felt and thought as did a “simple man,” Hans Müller of Medikon, when brought before the Zurich magistrates: “Do not lay a burden on my conscience, for faith is a gift given freely by God, and is not common property. The mystery of God lies hidden, like the treasure in the field, which no one can find but he to whom the Spirit shows it. So I beg you, ye servants of God, let my faith stand free.”[615] And the Anabaptists, alone of all the religious parties in those strenuous times, seem to have recognised that what they claimed for themselves they were bound to grant to others. Great differences in opinion did not prevent the strictest brotherly fellowship. Hans Denck held a doctrine of non-resistance as thoroughgoing as that of Count Tolstoy, and fully recognised the practical consequences to which it led. But this did not prevent the ardent and gifted young Humanist working loyally with Hübmaier, who did not share his extreme opinions. The divergences among the leaders appeared in their followers without destroying the sense of brotherhood. Franck tells us in his Chronicle[616] that some, but very few, held that no Christian could enter the magistracy, for Christians had nothing to do with the sword, but only with spiritual excommunication, and that no Christian should fight and slay. The others, he says, including the very great majority, believed that Christians might become magistrates, and that in case of dire necessity and when they clearly saw the leading of God, might take their share in fighting as soldiers.
Melchior Hoffman, while he believed in the incarnation, held that Jesus received His flesh directly from God, and did not owe His body to the Virgin Mother, through whom He passed “as light through a pane of glass.” He also held that the whole history of the world, down to the last days, was revealed in Scripture, and could be discovered through prayer and meditation. He was an eloquent and persuasive preacher, and his views were accepted by many; but it would be a great mistake to assume that they were shared in by the Anabaptists as a community. Yet even contemporaries, who were opponents, usually attribute the extreme opinions of a few to the entire body.
It ought to be observed that this tolerance of different opinions within the one society did not extend to those who remained true to the State Churches, whether Romanist or Reformed. The Anabaptists would have nothing to do with a State Church; and this was the main point in their separation from the Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists. It was perhaps the one conception on which all parties among them were in absolute accord. The real Church, which might be small or great, was for them an association of believing people; and the great ecclesiastical institutions into which unconscious infants were admitted by a ceremony called baptism long before they could have or exercise faith, represented to them an idea subversive of true Christianity. They had no wish to persecute men who differed widely from them, but they would not associate with them. This enforced “separation,” like everything else connected with Anabaptism, differed considerably in the way in which it was carried into practice. In some of the smaller sections it appeared in very extravagant forms. Wives and husbands, Anabaptists whose partners belonged to the State Churches, were in some small sections advised to refuse cohabitation. It is more than probable that some recorded sayings on which opponents have founded charges of encouraging sexual irregularities,—that it was better for women to have connection irregularly with members of the brotherhood than to cohabit with unbelieving husbands,—were simply extravagant ways of expressing this duty of separation.
It is also true that as time went on and sects of extreme opinions multiplied, the excommunication of members for their views came to be a common practice. It was as frequent among some of the smaller divisions as it is among modern Plymouth Brethren; but the occasion was, as a rule, difference of opinion about the way to express and exercise the duty of not returning evil for evil—was it permitted to pay taxes or not? was it lawful to see without protest their protectors using force to prevent their enemies from attacking them, etc.?
The earlier ideas of non-resistance, whatever practical shape they might take, gave way before the continuous and terrible persecution which the Anabaptists had to endure. They were first definitely condemned by Melchior Hoffman and his followers. They believed in the speedy establishment on earth of the millennial kingdom of Christ, and they declared that they were ready to fight for it when it appeared. With them the conception was simply a pious opinion, and they had no occasion to reduce it to action. The Anabaptists, however, who followed the teaching of Jan Matthys and of his disciple Jan Bockelson, repudiated passive resistance both in theory and in practice.
Of course, there are many things about some, perhaps all, great religious awakenings which critics can lay hold of to their disparagement; and it was so with the Anabaptist movement. Everything, from the scientific frame of mind to the religious sensibility, has the defects of its qualities. When a man is seized and possessed by a new spiritual emotion which seems to lift him above all previous experience of life or of thought, all things are new to him, and all things seem possible. His old life with its limitations has departed. He is embarked on a sea which has no imprisoning shores. He is carried along on a great current of emotion, and others are borne with him. Human deep calleth unto deep when they exchange confidences. He and his fellows have become new creatures; and that is almost all that they know about themselves. Such experiences are quite consistent with soundness of mind and clearness of vision of God and Divine things—that is usual; but sometimes they are too powerful for the imperfect mind which holds them. The converts are “puffed up,” as St. Paul said. Then arise morbid states, distorted vision, sometimes actual shipwreck of mental faculties, not seldom acute religious mania. Leaders in a great religious awakening have always to reckon with such developments—St. Paul, Francis of Assisi, Eckhart, Tauler, to say nothing of modern instances. The Apostle addressed morbid souls with severe sarcasm. Did any man really think, he asked, that to commit incest, to take to wife his father’s widow, was an example of the freedom with which Christ had made them free?
The Anabaptist movement had its share of such cases, like other religious movements; they grew more frequent as the unfortunate people were maddened by persecution; and these exceptional incidents are invariably retailed at length by historians hostile to the movement.
The Anabaptists, as a whole, were subjected to persecutions, especially from the Romanists and the Lutherans, much more harsh than befell any of the religious parties of the sixteenth century. Their treatment in Zurich may be taken as an example of how they came in contact with the civil authorities, and how their treatment grew in severity.[617]
The Swiss Anabaptists were in no sense disciples of Zwingli. They had held their distinctive principles and were a recognised community long before Zwingli came from Einsiedeln, and were the lineal descendants of the mediæval Waldenses. They welcomed the Reformer; some of them were in the company who challenged the authorities by eating meat during Lent in 1522; but a fundamental difference soon emerged. After the Public Disputation of 1523, when it became clear that Zurich meant to accept the Reformation, a deputation of the Brethren appeared before the Council to urge their idea of what a Reformed Church should be. Their statement of principles is an exposition of the fundamental conceptions which lay at the basis of the whole Anabaptist movement, and explains why they could not join either the Lutheran or the Reformed branch of the Reformation Church. They insisted that an Evangelical Church must differ from the Roman Church in this among other things, that it should consist of members who had made a personal profession of faith in their Saviour, and who had vowed to live in obedience to Jesus Christ their Hauptmann. It could not be like a State Church, whether Romanist or other, to which people belonged without any individual profession of faith. They insisted that the Church, thus formed, should be free from all civil control, to decide for itself what doctrines and ceremonies of worship were founded on the Word of God, and agreeable thereto, and should make this decision according to the opinions of a majority of the members. They further asked that the Church should be free to exercise, by brotherly admonition and, as a last resort, by excommunication, discipline on such of its members as offended against the moral law. They also declared that the Church which thus rejected State control ought to refuse State support, and proposed that the tithes should be secularised. The New Testament, they said, knew nothing about interest and usury, tithes, livings, and prebends.
These views were quite opposed to the ideas of the Zurich Council, who contemplated a State Church reformed from Romanist abuses, but strictly under the control of the State, and supported by the tithes, as the mediæval Church had been. They refused to adopt the ideas of the Anabaptists; and this was the beginning of the antagonism. The Council found that the great majority of the petitioners had doubts about infant baptism, and were inclined to what are now called Baptist views; and they brought matters to a crisis by ordering a Public Disputation on Baptism (Jan. 17th, 1525). Among the Anabaptists who appeared to defend their principles, were young Conrad Grebel the Humanist, Felix Manz, and Brother Jörg from Jacob’s House, a conventual establishment near Chur, who is always called “Blaurock” (Blue-coat). They were opposed by Zwingli, who insisted that infant baptism must be maintained, because it took the place of circumcision. The Council decided that Zwingli’s contention was right, and they made it a law that all children must be baptized, and added that all persons who refused to have their children baptized after Feb. 1st, 1525, were to be arrested. The Anabaptists were not slow to answer the challenge thus given. They met, and after deliberation and prayer Blaurock asked Conrad Grebel to baptize him in a truly Christian fashion, “there being no ordained person present,” and Grebel did so. “When this had been done the others entreated Blaurock to baptize them, which he did; and in deep fear of the Lord they gave themselves to God.” They resolved to preach and baptize, because in this they ought to obey God rather than men.[618]
When the Council heard that adult baptism had begun, they enacted that all who had been rebaptized after Feb. 8th (1525) were to be fined a silver mark, and that whoever was baptized after the issue of their decree should be banished. They also imprisoned the leaders. When they found that neither fines, nor threats, nor imprisonment, nor banishment had any effect on the Anabaptists, the Town Council thought to terrify them by a death sentence. Two were selected, Manz and Blaurock. The latter was not a citizen, and the sentence of death was commuted to one of public scourging and being thrust out of the town; but Felix Manz, a townsman, was put to death by drowning (1527). Zwingli insisted that this judicial murder was not done because of baptism, but because of rebellion!
What was done in Reformed Switzerland was seen all over Roman Catholic and Lutheran Germany. It is only fair to say that the persecution was more murderous within the Romanist districts; but the only Lutheran Prince who refused to permit a death penalty on Anabaptism was Philip of Hesse. He was afterwards joined by the Elector of Saxony.
In 1527 (Aug. 26th), the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria published an imperial mandate threatening all Anabaptists with the punishment of death. Two months later, two thousand copies of this proclamation were sent to the provinces of the German Empire, calling on the authorities to extirpate these unfortunate people. The rulers in Salzburg and in the Tyrol obeyed the order at once, and a fierce persecution soon raged. The minds of the population were inflamed by infamous calumnies. It was said in Salzburg that the Anabaptists had planned to massacre all the priests and monks within the principality. The well-known dislike of the brethren to war was tortured into the accusation that on a Turkish invasion they would side with the enemy against all loyal Germans. A certain Leopold Dickius, who wrote an atrocious book against the Anabaptists, demanded that all the men should be slain and the women and children suffered to perish from starvation; in this way only, he said, could their errors be stamped out.
The Salzburg chronicler, Kilian Leib, a Romanist, gives details of the persecution. He tells us that men, women, and young maidens suffered death by fire, beheading, and drowning, not only uncomplainingly, but with solemn joy. He dwells on the case of “a beautiful young girl” of sixteen, whose gentle innocence excited universal compassion, and who utterly refused to recant. The executioner pinned her hands to her sides, plunged her head downwards into a horse trough, held her there till she was suffocated, and then took her body away to burn it. The official lists show that the victims came from all classes in society. Noblemen, girdle-makers, wallet-makers, shoemakers, a town clerk, and ex-priests.
The persecution in the Tyrol was severe and thorough. A large number of the miners of the district were Anabaptists, and it was resolved to root out the so-called heresy. Descriptions were published of prominent Anabaptists, who wandered from place to place encouraging their brethren to steadfastness. “One named Mayerhofer has a long brown beard and wears a grey soldier’s coat; a companion, tall and pale, wears a long black coat with trimming; a third is shorter; a fourth, thin and of a ruddy complexion, is known as a cutler.” Conrad Braun, an assessor to the imperial Chamber and an eye-witness to the persecutions, wrote,—“I have seen with my own eyes that nothing has been able to bring back the Anabaptists from their errors or to make them recant. The hardest imprisonment, hunger, fire, water, the sword, all sorts of frightful executions, have not been able to shake them. I have seen young people, men, women, go to the stake singing, filled with joy; and I can say that in the course of my whole life nothing has moved me more.”[619] In the Tyrol and Görz the number of executions by the year 1531 amounted to a thousand, according to the chronicler Kirchmayr. Sebastian Franck reckons the number in Enisheim, within the government of Upper Austria, at six hundred. Seventy-three martyrs suffered in Linz within six weeks. The persecution in Bavaria was particularly severe; Duke William ordered that those who recanted were to be beheaded, and those who refused were to be burned. The general practice, made a law by Ferdinand of Austria in 1529 (April 23rd), was that only preachers, baptizers, Baptists who refused to recant, and those who had relapsed after recantation, were to be punished with death.[620]
In these bloody persecutions, which raged over almost all Europe, most of the earlier leaders of the Anabaptists perished; but the great body of their followers were neither intimidated nor disposed to abjure their teaching. Persecution did not come unexpectedly. No one was admitted into an Anabaptist community without being warned of the probable fate which lay before him. Baptism was a vow that he would be constant unto death; the “breaking of bread” strengthened his faith; the sermon was full of exhortations to endurance unto the end. Their whole service of worship was a preparation for and an expectation of martyrdom.
The strain of Christian song seemed to rise higher with the fires of persecution. Most of the Anabaptist hymns belong to the time when their sufferings were greatest. Some are simply histories of a martyrdom, as of Jörg Wagner at Munich, or of the “Seven Brethren at Germünd.” They are all echoes of endurance where the notes of the sob, the trust, the warning, the hosanna of a time of martyrdom, blend in rough heroic strains. They sing of Christ, who in these last days has manifested Himself that the pure word of His Gospel may again run through the earth as it did in the days of the early Church. They tell how the arch-enemy of souls seeks to protect himself against the advancing host of Jesus by exciting bloody persecutions. They utter warnings against false prophets, ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing, who beset all the paths of life leading towards the true fold, who pour forth threats and curses against the people of God, and urge on the rulers of this world to torture and to slay. They depict how the evil world storms against the true Church, shrieks out lies against the true followers of Jesus, and threatens them with burnings and all manner of cruel deaths. They mourn that the disciples of Jesus are slaughtered like sheep who have lost their shepherd; that they wander in wildernesses full of thorns that tear; that they have their homes like the night-birds among the cliffs or in the clefts of the rocks; that they are snared in the nets of the fowler; that they are hunted with hounds like the hares. Others, inspired by the internal hope which lives undying in every Christian heart, tell how Christ the Bridegroom seeks the love of the soul His bride, and how He wins her to Himself by His love-gifts of trial and of suffering, till at last the marriage feast is held, and the soul becomes wholly united to her Lord. The thoughts and phrases of the old Hebrew prophets, of the Psalmist, of the hymns of the Apocalypse, which have fed the fears and the hopes of longing, suffering, trusting generations of Christian people, reappear in those Anabaptist hymns. Life is for them a continuous Holy War, a Pilgrim’s Progress through an evil world full of snares, of dangers, of temptations, until at last the weary feet tread the Delectable Mountains, the River of Death is passed, and the open gates of the heavenly Jerusalem receive the wayfarer who has persevered to the end.
These poor persecuted people naturally sought for some city of refuge, i.e. a municipality or district where baptism of children was not enforced under penalties, and where the rebaptism of adults was not punished by imprisonment, torture, and death. For a time they found many such asylums. The Anabaptists were for the most part good workmen, and patient and provident cultivators of the soil, ready to pay all dues but the unscriptural war-tax. They were a source of wealth to many a great landed proprietor who was willing to allow them to live their lives in peace. Moravia, East Friesland, and, among the municipalities, Augsburg, Worms, and Strassburg gave shelter until the slow determined pressure of the higher authorities of the Empire compelled them to act otherwise. All that the Anabaptists desired was to be allowed to live in peace, and we hear of no great disturbances caused by their presence in any of these “cities of refuge.”
This brings us to what has been called “The Kingdom of God in Münster,” and to the behaviour of the Anabaptists there—the communism, polygamy, and so forth, which are described in all histories of the times.
Münster was the capital of the large and important ecclesiastical principality which bears the same name. The bishop was a Prince of the German Empire, and ruled his principality with all the rights of a secular prince. Clergy filled almost all the important posts of government; they levied taxes on imports and exports; the rich canonries of the cathedral were reserved for the sons of the landed gentry; the townspeople had no share in the richer benefices, and chafed under their clerical rulers. The citizens lived in a state of almost permanent disaffection, and their discontent had frequently taken the form of civic insurrections. They rose in 1525, in 1527 (in which year the name of a wealthy burgher, Bernardin Knipperdolling, first appears as a leader of his fellow-citizens), and in 1529, the dreadful year of famine and plague.[621] Many have been disposed to see in these emeutes, anticipations of the struggle which followed; but nothing in the sources warrants the conclusion. They were simply examples of the discontent of the unprivileged classes which had been common enough in Germany for at least a century.
The city of Münster had been slow to receive the religious Reformation, but in 1529 the people began to listen to the preaching of an obscure young chaplain attached to the Church of St. Maurice, built outside the walls of the town.[622] Bernhard Rothmann was a scholar, imbued with Humanist culture, gifted with the power of clear reasoning, and with natural eloquence. It is probable that he had early been attracted by the teaching of Luther;[623] but while he dwelt upon justification by faith, his sermons were full of that sympathy for the down-trodden toiling masses of the community which was a permanent note in all Anabaptist teaching. His sermons were greatly appreciated by the townsfolk, especially by the artisans, who streamed out of the gate to hear the young chaplain of St. Maurice. Was he not one of themselves, the son of a poor smith! The cathedral Canons, who, in the absence of the Bishop, had the oversight of all ecclesiastical affairs, grew alarmed at his popularity. Their opportunity for interference came when the mob, excited, they said, by Rothmann’s denunciations of relic and image worship, profaned the altars, tore the pictures, and destroyed the decorations in St. Maurice on the eve of Good Friday, 1531. Rothmann’s influence with the townsmen might have enabled him to defy the Canons, especially as the Prince Bishop, Friedrich von Wied, showed no inclination to molest the chaplain, and was himself suspected of Evangelical sympathies. But he quietly left the town and spent a year in travelling. He visited Wittenberg, where he made the acquaintance of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bugenhagen; went to Marburg, Speyer, and Strassburg. At Strassburg he had long intercourse with Capito and with Schwenkfeld the Mystic, who is frequently classed with the Anabaptists. An irresistible impulse seems to have drawn him back to Münster, where he was welcomed by the people, and the church of St. Maurice became henceforth the centre of a movement for religious Reformation; the preacher was supported by the “gilds” of artisans and by most of the citizens, among whom the most noted was Bernhard Knipperdolling.
An energetic protest by the Canons induced the Bishop to inhibit Rothmann from preaching in St. Maurice. He continued his addresses in the churchyard of St. Lambert (Feb. 18th, 1532), and a few days later he was placed in possession of the church itself. St. Lambert’s had been built by the municipality, and was the property of the town. Rothmann was appointed by the Town Council Evangelical preacher to the town, and was given one of the town’s “gild” houses for a parsonage.
Two months later the Bishop resigned, and was succeeded by Duke Erich of Brunswick-Grubenhagen, already Bishop of Osnabrück and Paderborn. The new Bishop determined to get rid of Rothmann. He made representations to Hesse and Electoral Saxony and other Evangelical Powers, and persuaded them to induce the more moderate of the reforming party in Münster to abandon Rothmann; and, this done, the preacher was ordered to leave the city. The “gilds” of artisans refused to let their preacher depart, and, under the leadership of Knipperdolling,[624] drafted a letter to the authorities declaring their determination to retain him at all hazards. The democracy of Münster and the religious movement for the first time openly combined against the authorities of the city.
While things were at this pass, the Bishop died (May 13th, 1532). The Chapter elected (June 1st) Count Franz von Waldeck, already in possession of Minden, and made Bishop of Osnabrück a few days later (June 11th)—a pluralist of the first rank. The reforming party in Münster expected the worst from their new ruler. A full assembly of the “gilds” of the town was held, and by an overwhelming majority the members pledged themselves to defend their pastor and his Gospel with body and goods while life lasted. A committee of thirty-six burghers was elected to watch the course of events and to take counsel with the civic rulers and the presidents of the “gilds.” Rothmann published theses explaining his teaching, and challenging objectors to a public disputation. Public meetings were held; the Town Council was formally requested to hand over all the parochial churches to Evangelical preachers; which was done—the Cathedral alone remaining for Roman Catholic worship.
These proceedings produced unavailing remonstrances from the Bishop. The nobles in the neighbourhood tried to interfere, but to no purpose. In October (1532) the Bishop’s party within the town began to take action. They attempted to sequester the goods of the more prominent disaffected citizens; chains were placed across the principal streets to prevent communication between the different quarters; an attempt was made to isolate the town itself. These things meant war. The “gilds,” always a military organisation in mediæval cities, armed. A party of knights sent to invade the town retired before the armed citizens. While the Bishop sought to strengthen himself by alliances and to beguile the townsmen by negotiation, a thousand armed burghers marched by night to the little township of Telgte, where a large number of the ecclesiastical and secular nobles were encamped, surrounded it, captured the Bishop’s partisans, and returned to hold them as hostages. This act afforded the occasion for the intervention of Philip of Hesse. An arrangement was come to by which Münster was declared to be an Evangelical city and enrolled within the Schmalkald League. The history of Münster up to this time (Feb. 14th, 1533) did not differ from that of many towns which had adopted the Reformation. Rothmann had been the leader in Münster, like Brenz in Hall, Alber in Reutlingen, or Lachmann at Heilbron.
It is usually assumed that up to this time Rothmann was a Lutheran in his teaching, that he had won Münster for the great Lutheran party, and that his future aberrations from the Evangelical theology were due to his weakness before the Anabaptist mob who later invaded the city. This seems to be a mere assumption. He had certainly taught justification by faith; but that did not make him a Lutheran. The dividing line between the various classes of objectors to the Roman Catholic theology in the sixteenth century was drawn at the meaning of the Sacraments, and especially of the Lord’s Supper. There is absolutely no evidence to show that Rothmann was ever a follower of Luther in his theory of the Holy Supper. He had visited Luther and Melanchthon during his year of absence from Münster, but they had never been quite sure of him. He has confessed that it was at Strassburg and not at Wittenberg that he got most help for his future work and received it from Capito, who was no Lutheran, and from Schwenkfeld, who was an Anabaptist Mystic. It was Strassburg and not Wittenberg that he called “the crown of all Christian cities and Churches!” In his confession of faith he says that the Mass is no sacrifice, but only a sign of the true Sacrifice; and that the Mass and the Lord’s Supper have no other meaning than to remind us of the death of Christ, and to awaken in our hearts a certainty of the freely given grace of God. That is not Lutheran doctrine, it is not even Zwinglian; it is much nearer the Anabaptist. It is also pretty clear that he held the doctrine of the “inner light” in the sense of many Anabaptists. It may be safely said that if Rothmann was not an Anabaptist from the beginning, his was a mind prepared to accept their doctrines almost as soon as they were clearly presented to him. Heinrich Roll, a fugitive from Jülich who sought refuge in Münster, convinced Rothmann of the unlawfulness of infant baptism. No sooner had this conviction laid hold on him than he refused to baptize infants—for Rothmann was always straightforward. His views annoyed a large number of the leading citizens, prominent among whom was Van der Wieck, the syndic of the town. These men, all Lutherans, besieged their pastor with remonstrances, and finally brought him before the Town Council. The matter came to a head on Sept. 7th (1533), when Staprade, the assistant preacher at St. Lambert’s, refused to baptize the children of two Lutheran members of the Town Council who had been brought to the church for the purpose. When the preachers were brought before the Council, they were informed that such things would not be allowed. Staprade, the chief offender and a non-burgher, was banished, and Rothmann with the other clergy who agreed with him were threatened with the same fate if they persisted in declining to baptize infants. They refused to obey the Council; they were promptly deposed, and their churches were closed against them. But the mass of the citizens were attached to Rothmann, and their attitude became too threatening for the Magistrates to maintain their uncompromising position. Rothmann was permitted to remain, and was allowed to preach in the Church of St. Servatius. The Lutheran Magistrates brought preachers into the town to occupy the other places of worship.
The Magistrates, Van der Wieck being the leading spirit among them, resolved to hold a public disputation on the subject of Baptism. They had brought to Münster the famous Humanist, Hermann von dem Busche, now a professor in Marburg and a distinguished defender of the Lutheran Reformation, and they counted on his known learning and eloquence to convince their fellow-citizens that the views of Rothmann were unscriptural. The conference was to be perfectly free. Roman Catholic theologians were invited, and took part. Rothmann appeared to defend his position. The invitations had been signed not only by the Magistrates, but by the heads of the “gilds” of the town.[625] Van der Wieck confessed that the result of the disputation was not what he expected. So far as the great mass of the people were concerned, Rothmann appeared to have the best of the argument, and he stood higher than ever in the estimation of the citizens. Rothmann, whose whole career shows that opposition made him more and more advanced, now began to dwell upon the wrongs of the commonalty and the duty of the rich to do much more for their poorer brethren than they did. He taught by precept as well as example. He lived an openly ascetic life, that he might abound in charity. His sermons and his life had an extraordinary effect on the rich as well as on the poor. Creditors forgave debtors, men placed sums of money in the hands of Rothmann for distribution. There was no enforced communism, but the example of primitive Church in Jerusalem was followed as far as possible. Among these thoroughgoing followers of Rothmann, a wealthy lady, the mother-in-law of Bernardin Knipperdolling, was conspicuous.
The Magistrates became seriously alarmed at the condition of things. They knew that so long as they remained a Lutheran municipality, even nominally, the great Lutheran Princes, like Philip of Hesse and the Elector of Saxony, would protect them against their Romanist Bishop; but Lutherans and Romanists alike disliked and distrusted Anabaptists, and the imperial edict would surely be enforced against them sooner or later. Rothmann’s preaching, which they could not control, and the power he exercised through the “gilds,” made it impossible for them to maintain that Münster was a member of the confederacy of Lutheran cities. On the other hand, the news that Münster had practically become Anabaptist, spread far and wide among these persecuted people, who began to think that it was destined to be a conspicuous city of refuge, perhaps the Zion or New Jerusalem whose establishment Melchior Hoffman had predicted. They gathered from all parts to place themselves under the protection of its walls. The great majority naturally came from the Netherlands, where the persecution was hottest. The refugees were almost all Melchiorites—men who looked for a speedy termination of their sufferings in the establishment of the kingdom of God upon the earth; and the majority of them were Dutch Melchiorites, men to whom freedom was a tradition, ready to fight for it, disciples of Jan Matthys, who had taught them to abandon the doctrine of passive resistance so universally held by all sections of the earlier Anabaptists.[626] Rothmann had long been acquainted with the books and tracts of Hoffman, and had great sympathy with them. He as well as the Magistrates foresaw trouble for himself and for the city. He went the length of advising friends who did not share his opinions to leave the town; for himself, his manifest duty appeared to be to risk all on behalf of the poor people whom God had given into his hand.
The last months of 1532 saw Rothmann and the Lutheran Town Council facing each other with growing mutual suspicion. On Dec. 8th, a journeyman smith, Johann Schröder, began preaching Anabaptist doctrines in the churchyard of St. Lambert’s, and challenged the Lutheran pastor, Fabricius, to a disputation. This was more than the Town Council could endure. They prohibited Rothmann preaching, and declared that they withdrew their protection—a sentence of virtual outlawry (Dec. 11th). He calmly told the messenger of the Council that he depended on the help of higher powers than his masters, and preached publicly in the Church of St. Servatius. Schröder had begun to preach again, and was apprehended. The “gild” of the smiths rose, and, headed by their officials, forced the Council to release their comrade. The Anabaptists and Rothmann had won a notable triumph, which was soon widely known. Banished Anabaptist pastors returned to the town.
Events marched quickly thereafter. Bartholomaeus Boekbinder and Willem de Kuiper, sent by Jan Matthys, appeared in Münster (Jan. 5th, 1533). We can infer what their message was from what followed. Rothmann denounced the Council and its Lutheran preachers. Riots were the consequence, many of the rioters being women, among whom the nuns of the Überwasser convent were conspicuous. It was declared that all believers ought to be rebaptized, and that a list of the faithful ought to be made. The document contained fourteen hundred names within eight days. The mass of the people enthusiastically believed in the near approach of the Day of the Lord.
Soon afterwards (Jan. 13th, 1533), Jan Bockelson (John of Leyden) entered the town. He was the favourite disciple and alter ego of Jan Matthys. He brought with him the famous Twenty-one Articles, and called upon the faithful to unite themselves into a compact organisation pledged to carry them out. He was received with enthusiasm.
The Council, feeling their helplessness, appealed to the Bishop, who contented himself with ordering them to execute the imperial mandate against Anabaptists. He was as much incensed against the Lutherans as against the Anabaptists, and hoped that the two parties would destroy themselves. Within the town, Anabaptists fought with the combined Evangelicals and Romanists, and on two occasions the tumults were succeeded by truces which guaranteed full liberty of worship to all persons (Jan. 28th and Feb. 9th). Then the Council abandoned the struggle. The principal Burgomaster, Tylbeck, was baptized, and Van der Wieck, with many of the principal citizens, left the town. Van der Wieck fell into the hands of the Bishop, who slaughtered him barbarously.
A new Council, entirely Anabaptist, was elected, with Bernardin Knipperdolling and Gerhard Kibbenbroick, a leading merchant, as Burgomasters (Feb. 28th). The complete rule of the Anabaptists had begun. This date also marks the beginning of the investment of the city by the Bishop’s troops. It should never be forgotten, as it frequently is, that during the whole period of Anabaptist domination in Münster the town was undergoing the perils of a siege, and that military considerations had to be largely kept in mind. Nor should it be forgotten that during its existence the Bishop’s troops were murdering in cold blood every Anabaptist they could lay their hands on.
Jan Matthys himself had come to Münster some time in February, urged thereto by a letter from Bockelson, and the citizens had become accustomed to see the long lean figure of the prophet, with his piercing eyes and flowing black beard, pass to and fro in their streets. They had learned to hang breathless on his words as his sonorous voice repeated the message which the Lord had given him to utter, or described the visions which had been vouchsafed to him. When an Anabaptist Council ruled the city they were but the mouthpiece of the prophet. His reign was brief, but while it lasted he issued command after command.
Separation from the world was one of the ideas he dwelt upon in his addresses; and to him this meant that no unbelievers, no unbaptized, could remain within the walls of an Anabaptist city. The command went forth that all adults must be baptized or leave the town. It is scarcely to be wondered that, with the great likelihood of falling into the hands of the Bishop’s soldiers as soon as they got beyond the walls, the great majority of those who had not yet received the seal of the new communion submitted to the ceremony. They were marched to the market-place, where they found “three or more” Anabaptist preachers, each with a great vessel full of water before them. The neophytes knelt down, received the usual admonition, and a dish of water was thrice emptied on their heads in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This done, they went to the Burgomaster’s house and had their names entered on the roll.[627]
It was also by Matthys’ orders that what is called the communism of Münster was begun. The duty of systematic and brotherly charity had from the first been an outstanding one among the Anabaptists. Like all other principles which find immediate outcome in action, this one of brotherly love had found many ways of taking actual shape. In a few of the smaller sections of the brethren it had appeared in the form of communism so far as food and raiment went. In some of the communities in Moravia the Brethren subscribed to a common fund out of which common meals were provided; and these payments were compulsory. We have seen how Rothmann’s sermons had produced an extraordinary outburst of benevolence in Münster before the coming of the prophets. It does not appear that Matthys’ commands went further than the exhortations of Rothmann. Münster was a beleaguered city. When the siege began it contained about seventeen hundred men, between five and six thousand women, besides thousands of children. The largest proportion of these were refugees. It is evident that numbers could not support themselves, but were absolutely dependent upon the charity of their neighbours. The preachers invited the faithful to give up their money, and what provisions they could spare to feed the poverty striken. Large numbers thus appealed to brought all their portable property; others gave part; some refused, and were denounced publicly. The provisions stored in the monasteries or in private houses abandoned by their proprietors—were taken for the common good. When the siege had lasted long, and the enemy were deliberately starving the inhabitants into surrender, the communism in food became stricter, as is the case in any beleaguered fortress. No attempt was ever made to institute a thoroughgoing communism. What existed at first was simply an abundant Christian charity enforced by public opinion,[628] and latterly a requisitioning of everything that could be used to support the whole population of a besieged city.
Jan Matthys did not long survive his coming to Münster. On the evening of the 4th of April, as he sat at supper in a friend’s house, he was observed to spend long minutes in brooding. At last, sighing heavily, he was heard to ejaculate, “Loved Father, not my will but Thine be done.” He rose quietly from his seat, shook hands with all his companions, solemnly kissed each one; then left the house in silence, accompanied by his wife. Next day with about twenty companions he went out by one of the gates of the city, fell fiercely on the enemy, was overpowered by numbers, and received his death-stroke. A religious enthusiast and a singularly straightforward and courageous man!
His death depressed the defenders of Münster greatly; but they were rallied by the persuasive eloquence of Jan Bockelson, the favourite disciple of the dead prophet. It was under the leadership of Bockelson—Jan of Leyden he was called—that the Town Council of Münster was abolished; that twelve elders were chosen to rule the people; that Jan himself became king, and had his Court; that the old miracle plays were revived, etc. The only one of the many actions of this highly talented and eloquent young Dutchman which need concern us was the institution of polygamy, for which he seems to have been almost solely responsible.
Polygamy is the one dark stain on the Anabaptists of Münster, and one that is ineffaceable. Not unnaturally, yet quite unjustly, the fact of its institution has been used continually to blacken the character of the whole movement. It was an episode, a lamentable one, in the history of Anabaptism in Münster; it had nothing to do with the brethren outside the town. The whole question presents difficulties which, with our present information, cannot be removed. That men whose whole past lives had been examples of the most correct moral behaviour, and who had been influenced by deep and earnest religious feelings, should suddenly (for it was sudden) have given the lie to their own previous teaching and to the tenets of every separate section of Anabaptism, that they should have sullied the last few months of an heroic and desperate defence within a doomed city by the institution of polygamy, is an insoluble puzzle.[629]
We are not now dependent for our knowledge of the Anabaptist movement on the writings of embittered opponents, or upon such tainted sources as confessions of martyrs wrung from them under torture. The diligence of archæologists has exhumed a long list of writings of the leaders in the rising. They give us trustworthy accounts of the opinions and teachings of almost every sect classed under the common name. We know what they thought about all the more important matters which were in controversy during the sixteenth century—what they taught about Free Will, Original Sin, Justification, the Trinity, the Person of Christ, and so on. We have clear glimpses of the kind of lives they led—a genuinely pious, self-denying, Christian walk and conversation. Their teaching was often at variance with the Romanist and the Lutheran doctrinal confessions; but they never varied from the moral life which all Christians are called upon to live. Their writings seldom refer to marriage; but when they do it is always to bear witness to the universal and deeply rooted Christian sentiment that marriage is a sacred and unbreakable union of one man with one woman. Nay more, one document has descended to us which bears testimony to the teaching of the Anabaptists within the beleaguered city only a few weeks before the proclamation of polygamy. It is entitled Bekentones des globens und lebens der gemein Criste zu Monster,[630] and was meant to be an answer to calumnies circulated by their enemies. It contains a paragraph on Marriage which is a clear and distinct assertion that the only Christian marriage is the unbreakable union of one man with one woman.[631]
It is true that the Anabaptist thought of “separation,” when carried out in its most extreme way and to its utmost logical consequences, struck a blow at the sanctity of the marriage tie. All taught that the “believer,” i.e. he or she who had been rebaptized, ought to keep themselves separate from the “world,” i.e. those who had not submitted to rebaptism; and in the more extreme sects it was alleged that this meant that spouses ought not to cohabit with “unbelieving” partners. This was held and practised among the Melchiorites, and was stated in its extremest form in the Twenty-one Rules sent to Münster by Jan Matthys by the hand of Bockelson. They contained two prescriptions—one for the unmarried, which exhorted them only to marry in the Lord; another for the married, which implies that marriage contracted between husband and wife before rebaptism ought to be repeated. This meant that marriages contracted by persons yet “in the world” were not valid, and, of course, destroyed the sanctity of all marriages outside the circle of the brethren. But when a Melchiorite at Strassburg, Klaus Frey, whose wife was not an Anabaptist, carried out the principle to its logical consequences and married an Anabaptist woman, his “unbelieving” wife being alive, he was promptly excommunicated.
When the information to be gathered from the various sources is combined, what took place in Münster seems to have been as follows. Sometime in July (1534), John Bockelson summoned the preachers, Rothmann at their head, and the twelve elders to meet him in the Rathaus. There he propounded to them his proposal to inaugurate polygamy, and argued the matter with them for eight successive days. We are told that Rothmann and the preachers opposed the scheme in a determined manner. The arguments used by the prophet—arguments of the flimsiest nature—have also been recorded. He dwelt on the necessity of accepting certain biblical expressions in their most literal sense, and in giving them their widest application. He insisted especially on the command of God, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth; he brought forward the example of the patriarchs and other examples of polygamy from the Old Testament; he went the length of saying that when St. Paul insisted that bishops must be husbands of one wife, the phrase implied that all who were not bishops were free to take more than one; he dwelt on the special conditions existing among the population within the town,—the number of male refugees, either unmarried or who had left their wives behind them in the places from which they had fled; the disproportionate number of women (more than three women for every man),—and the difficulties thereby created to prevent them from obeying the command of God to be fruitful and increase; and he urged that in their present condition the command of God could only be obeyed by means of polygamy.
In the end he brought preachers and elders round to his opinion; and in spite of opportunities given them for revolt, they remained steadfast to it. They preached upon its advantages for three days to the people in the Cathedral square; and it was Rothmann who proclaimed the decree commanding polygamy to the people. How were the preachers persuaded to forego their opposition? What one of the threadbare arguments used by the prophet convinced them? Had he proclaimed polygamy as a divine command received by him as a prophet, we might imagine the preachers and people, such was the exalted state of their minds, receiving it with reverence; but the prophet did not announce that he had received any such message. He relied solely upon his arguments. They did not convince all the people. The proclamation of polygamy awoke violent protests upon the part of the native townsmen, who, headed by a “master-smith” named Möllenbecke, felt that they would rather hand over the city to the Bishop’s forces than live in a polygamist society, and the revolt was almost successful; but the preachers stood firm in their support of the prophet and of his polygamy; and it was the women who were mainly instrumental in causing the revolt to be a failure.
If we are to judge by the use made of it in Rothmann’s Restitution,[632] which defends the introduction of the new marriage laws, the preachers seem to have been most impressed by the argument which dwelt on the condition of the city—the large proportion of men whose wives were in the towns they had abandoned to take refuge in Münster, and the great multitude of women. It is just possible that it was this economic argument that affected both them and the prophet himself. This is the view taken by such writers as Kautsky, Belfort Bax, and Heath. The explanation is confirmed by the fact that the decree was more than a proclamation of polygamy. It provided that all marriageable men must take wives, and that all women must be under the care of a husband. The laws against sexual irregularity were as strong during the reign of polygamy as before its introduction. But there is this to be said against it, that the town of Münster, notwithstanding its abnormal conditions, was singularly pure in life, and that polygamy, so far from improving the moral condition, made it distinctly worse.
Detmer, whose opinions are always worthy of respect, believes than Jan of Leyden had fallen violently in love with the young, beautiful, and intellectual Divara, the widow of Jan Matthys, and that, as he could not marry her apart from polygamy, he persuaded his preachers and elders to consent to his proposals. His wonderful magnetic influence overbore their better judgment.
What is evident is that the decree of polygamy was suddenly conceived and forced upon the people. If Jan of Leyden[633] took no share in its proclamation, he set the people an example of obedience. He promptly married Divara as soon as it was lawful to do so. He used the ordinance to strengthen his position. His other wives—he had sixteen in all—were the daughters or near relations of the leaders in Münster. There is evidence to show that his own character deteriorated rapidly under the new conditions of life.
The siege of Münster went on during all these months. The Bishop’s soldiers attempted several assaults, and were always beaten back. They seem latterly to have relied on the power of hunger. The sufferings of the citizens during the later weeks were terrible. At length Heinrich Gresbeck, deserting to the besiegers’ camp, offered to betray the city to its enemies. He showed them, by plans and models in clay, how to get through the defences, and himself prepared the way for the Bishop’s soldiers to enter. The Anabaptists gathered for one last desperate defence in the market-place, under the leadership of Bernardin Knipperdolling and Bernard Krechting, with Rothmann by their side. When the band was reduced to three hundred men, they capitulated on promise of safe-conduct to leave the town. It is needless to say that the bargain was not kept. Rothmann was believed to have perished in the market-place. The city was given over to pillage, and the streets were soon strewn with dead bodies. Then a court was established to try the Anabaptist prisoners. The first woman to suffer was the fair young Divara. She steadfastly refused to abjure, and met her fate in her own queenly way. No man who had been in any way prominent during the siege was allowed to escape death. Jan Bockelson, Bernardin Knipperdolling, and Bernard Krechting were reserved to suffer the most terrible tortures that the diabolical ingenuity of mediæval executioners could devise. It was long believed that Rothmann had escaped, and that he had got away to Rostock or to Lübeck; more than one person was arrested on the suspicion of being the famous preacher of Münster—“a short, dark man, with straight brown hair,” was his description in the Lübeck handbills.
The horrible fate of Münster did not destroy the indomitable Anabaptists. Menno Simons (b. 1496 or 1505 at Witmarsum, a village near Franecker), “a man of integrity, mild, accommodating, patient of injuries, and so ardent in his piety as to exemplify in his own life the precepts he gave to others,” spent twenty-five laborious years in visiting the scattered Anabaptist communities and uniting them in a simple brotherly association. He purged their minds of the apocalyptic fancies taught by many of their later leaders under the influence of persecution, inculcated the old ideas of non-resistance, of the evils of State control over the Church, of the need of personal conversion, and of adult baptism as its sign and seal. From his labours have come all the modern Baptist Churches.