ANABAPTISTS. — The term “anabaptism” is difficult to classify, since, from the sixteenth century onward, it embraced those radicals of Protestantism who were sometimes also called catabaptists, Baptists, or rebaptizers (Wiedertäufer).
The principal meaning of the term in many cases applies to that faction which, within Protestantism, rejects infant baptism in order to administer it to adults, not as a “sacrament,” but only as a “commandment.” In the strict historical sense, however, a. designates that faction of fanatical enthusiasts who were also called Prophets of Zwickau and who, in 1520, had as their leader Thomas Münzer, of Waldshut (1489–1525).
The latter, educated at Halle and Leipzig, initially entered into relations with Luther, whom he regarded as an “example and light of the friends of God.” Indeed, it was Luther who, in 1520, sent him to Zwickau, where, after virulent controversies with the local Catholic clergy, he allied himself with the weavers of the region, who constituted the majority of the population. Prominent among them was the master weaver Nicholas Storch, who soon became a spiritualistic communard after having come into contact in Bohemia with the Taborite Bohemian Brethren.
Their agreement resulted in a further ferment of religious innovations, since, breaking also with Luther, they proclaimed indispensable the inner light of that Spirit through which, even independently of the Bible, God communicates the truth to true believers. Encouraged by Münzer, Storch set himself up as the head of a new nucleus of dissidents within Protestantism itself and presented himself as the heavenly envoy charged with establishing the “Kingdom of God” on earth. Accompanied by Marcus Stubner, formerly a student at Wittenberg, and by another weaver, Storch also went to this latter university centre in order to win the professors to his cause: Carlstadt, the rector, was his most celebrated conquest.
Other highly prominent Anabaptist figures were Hans Hur, Denck, Hetzer, Grebel, Phillips, Bunderlin, Czechowitz, Melchior Rinck, Melchior Hofmann, Jan Matthys, and others. All of them, influenced by the millenarian and socialist views of Münzer and Storch, and taking advantage of the parallel insurrectionary movement of the German peasants—which, although they had not provoked it, they nevertheless encouraged—found themselves at a certain point involved in the Peasants’ War. The peasants had risen in arms in 1525 to assert their so-called “Twelve Articles,” apparently drafted by Hubmaier, which demanded the vindication of their rights.
The uprising provoked reactions from both sides. The peasants razed castles, monasteries, and religious houses to the ground. Münzer then placed himself at the head of the peasants, who followed his fanatical harangues blindly, but who, numbering as many as 100,000, fell victim to the Swabian League, which was then organized to resist such fury. A few days after the ill-fated day of Frankentausen, Münzer himself was captured at Mühlhausen and beheaded on 27 May 1525.
The sect, however, did not end with the death of its first leader but, despite persecution, spread further. Melchior Hofmann, a furrier from Swabia, improvised himself as a visionary preacher at Emden in 1528 and installed there as bishop John Matthiesen, a baker from Haarlem. From Emden, the latter in turn sent apostles to spread Anabaptist doctrines. Two of them, through their incendiary preaching, gained control of the city of Münster. In this episode Matthiesen lost his life in a desperate sortie at the head of only thirty men against Count Waldeck, prince-bishop of Münster, who had besieged the city. The churches were then destroyed and, following the model of the Old Testament, twelve judges were chosen from the tribes, while Bockhold was crowned king of this so-called “New Zion” under the name of John of Leiden. All this took place in 1534; but in the following year, after Münster had become a theatre of every kind of licentiousness, several Protestant princes reconquered the city and, having removed its fanatical usurpers, also brought this “new kingdom” of biblical parody to an end.
The later fortunes of Anabaptism lead us to Holland, where, in Amsterdam, the disciples of Bockhold, having abandoned the communism of women and property, preached yet another “new kingdom” of pure Christians. The Anabaptists also took root in Moravia, distinguishing themselves there, in truth, by their industrious virtue. Their later imprint, through Balthasar Hubmaier, can nevertheless be discerned in the present-day denomination of the Baptists, advocates of absolute freedom of conscience and of a decisive separation of Church and State, as well as in the Mennonite faction promoted by the former priest Menno Simons, founder of independent congregations in the Netherlands and Germany.