ANABAPTISTS. - The term "Anabaptism" is of complex classification since, from the 16th century onward, it embraces 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 the baptism of infants in order to administer it, not as a "sacrament," but only as a "commandment," to adults. In a 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, first entered into contact with Luther, whom he regarded as an "example and light of the friends of God." It was in fact Luther, in 1520, who sent him to Zwickau where, after virulent polemics with the local Catholic clergy, he formed an alliance with the weavers of the area, who constituted the majority of the population. Quite prominent among them was the master weaver Nicholas Storch, who soon became a spiritualistic communard after having been, in Bohemia, in contact with the Bohemian Taborite Brethren.
The agreement between them resolved itself into a further ferment of religious novelties 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 constituted himself head of a new nucleus of dissidents within Protestantism itself and presented himself as the heavenly envoy with the mission of establishing on earth the "Kingdom of God." Accompanied by Marcus Stubner, formerly a student at Wittenberg, and by another weaver, Storch also went to that latter university center in order to win over the professors to his cause: Carlstadt, the rector, was his most notorious 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 these, influenced by the millenarian and socialistic views of Münzer and Storch and leveraging the collateral insurrectionary movement of the German peasants which they, though without having stirred it up, nevertheless encouraged, found themselves at a given moment caught up in the war of the peasants who rose in arms in 1525 for the vindication of their so-called "Twelve Articles," apparently drafted by Hubmaier, which demanded claims.
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 with eyes closed followed his fanatical harangues but who, in numbers of fully 100,000, fell victim to the Swabian League, which then organized itself to react to 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 original leader but, albeit amid persecutions, spread. Melchior Hofmann, a furrier from Swabia, in 1528 having made himself a visionary preacher at Emden, installed there as bishop Giovanni Matthiesen, a baker from Haarlem. The latter, from Emden, in turn sent out apostles to spread Anabaptist doctrines. Two of them, by their incendiary preaching, made themselves masters 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 laid siege to the city. The churches were then destroyed and, on the model of the Old Testament, twelve judges were chosen from the tribes, and Bockhold was crowned king of this so-called "New Zion" under the name of John of Leiden. All this happened in 1534, except that the following year, Münster having become a theater of every licentiousness, several Protestant princes reconquered the city and, having disposed of its fanatical usurpers, put an end also to this "new kingdom" of biblical parody.
The further fortunes of Anabaptism take us to Holland where, at Amsterdam, the disciples of Bockhold, having abolished the communism of women and goods, preached yet another "new kingdom" of pure Christians. In Moravia too the A. struck roots, indeed distinguishing themselves by their industrious virtue. Their late imprint, through Balthasar Hubmaier, is nevertheless discernible in the present-day denomination of the Baptists, champions of absolute freedom of conscience and of a sharp separation of Church and State, as well as in the faction of the Mennonites promoted by the former priest Menno Simons, founder of independent Congregations in the Netherlands and in Germany.