IV. The Anabaptists in South Germany

It would be natural to presume that the suppression of the Peasant insurrection, producing, as it did, so violent a reaction against the Baptists in neighbouring countries, must have made any success of that order in Germany itself quite impossible. But while this view would accord with the circumstances of a modern, centralised government, it does not take into account the feudal, local separatism so strong in the German Empire at that time. If this separatism increased the difficulty of combining all the revolutionary or rebellious parties into one common movement, it also diminished the energy of the reactionary blow, which did not fall on all these classes simultaneously or with equal force.

The majority of the large free cities of the Empire had confronted the Peasant insurrection with great coolness. Not only did the higher classes of burgesses – the patricians – stand in a position of enmity to the peasants, but the middle and lower classes of the urban population – the town democracy – entertained only a lukewarm sympathy for the rural population; a lukewarmness which was often not far removed from aversion.

But as the democracy of the large towns had refrained from strengthening with their power the insurrection of the peasantry, they were not affected – or at least directly affected – by the overthrow of that insurrection. The democracy of most of the imperial cities of south Germany was unbroken after the Peasant War. But at that period an acute character was given to the conflicts between this democracy and the urban aristocracy on the one hand, and, on the other, between the whole body of the urban population and the princely powers who were aspiring to the rule and exploitation of the towns – conflicts which indeed never wholly ceased in those centuries.

The mass of the population in the Imperial cities had welcomed Luther’s resistance to the Pope with joy, and given it their support, their enthusiasm, however, diminished in proportion to Luther’s increasing lukewarmness towards the democracy.

At the same time that Luther began to sever himself from the democracy, there arose in Zurich a form of Church Reformation which quite coincided with the interests of the urban guild-democracy. It soon excited the attention of the Imperial towns of South Germany, where it gained a footing; without, however, at the outset, placing itself in opposition to Lutheranism. But the two parties were bound to come into antagonism as soon as Luther and his followers declared themselves against the democracy. And thus the epoch of the Peasant War precisely indicates the period of the beginning of the great struggle between Luther and Zwingli; seemingly only a conflict over a word; a battle to decide whether Christ said: “This” (the bread) “is my body,” or “This signifies my body”; but in reality a battle between middle-class democratic reformation and princely reformation, fought out with theological arguments, but concerning very mundane matters.

All Germany had been full of the struggle since 1525, but it was carried on most eagerly in the South German Imperial cities of Strassburg, Ulm, Constance, Lindau, Meinningen, Augsburg, &c. As had already been the case under similar conditions, the communists were the tertius gaudens. By their conflict with the Wittenberg pope, they now acquired room and light for a freer development, just as they had previously done, by their struggle with the Roman Pope. The adherents of Zwingli in South Germany were in a position to use the Anabaptists as a tool against the Lutherans; hence they tolerated that sect during the years immediately following 1525, Zwingli himself, now their persecutor in Zurich, having, indeed, very recently favoured them.

South Germany became the asylum of political refugees from the free republic, who went there in large numbers and rapidly gained many adherents. Their peaceable intentions, which repudiated all resort to violence, exactly harmonised with the universal frame of mind among the lower classes after the suppression of the Peasant rebellion. Some who had previously been partisans of Münzer, went over to them; e.g., Hans Hut, the bookbinder, and Melchoir Rinck. Rinck was at one time schoolmaster at Hersfeld, and afterwards pastor at Eckartshaufen in the jurisdiction of Eisenach. He had, moreover, fought at Frankenhausen, but, more fortunate than Münzer, escaped with his life.

The subsequent increase among the order of the Anabaptists in Germany was so rapid that it was thought by many in that country that the order had, generally speaking, come into existence either during or after the Peasant War. The Baptists themselves encouraged this view, hoping thereby to refute the accusation that they had plotted that insurrection, as was firmly asserted by their opponents. In support of their denial they could appeal to the fact that the adoption of rebaptism as a symbol of the Brotherhood, their outspoken severance from the Zwinglian Church, and their constitution as a separate religious community took place no earlier than the beginning of the year 1525.

Sebastian Franck accepts this representation, exerting himself most zealously to prove that they were in nowise rebelliously inclined.

At all events, Franck’s view is nearer the truth than the one still more widely disseminated and adopted by Bullinger – that Münzer was the founder of the Baptist sect. Bullinger had, it is true, seen the beginnings of Anabaptism in Zurich, but the Zurich pastor must have been desirous of shifting the birthplace of the inconvenient order from the home of Zwinglianism to that of Lutheranism.

The headquarters of the Baptist order in South Germany were Augsburg and Strassburg, two weaver towns in which Beghardism was very strong.

Another centre was Nurenberg, where we know Münzer found many congenial spirits, although the patrician element was too strong to admit of a successful popular movement at that time.

At the end of the year 1524 (perhaps immediately after Münzer’s arrival in the town) a number of “heretics” were thrown into prison at Nurenberg, among whom were Dürer’s pupil, Jorg Penz, and Hans Denck, who had been appointed Rector of the school at Sebald, on the recommendation of Oekolampadius at Bâle.

The chief personages among the accused were exiled, including Denck, who went to Switzerland, where the cause of the Brethren was beginning to be highly prosperous. At the commencement of the year 1525 we find him as proofreader in a printing establishment at St. Galle; but the autumn of the same year saw him once more at Augsburg in Germany. In this town the enmity between Lutheranism and Zwinglianism was beginning to show itself in its acutest form; there the battle fought at that time between the two parties raged at its fiercest, and consequently the Baptists came under conditions which were most favourable to them.

The community grew rapidly. According to Urbanus Rhegius it already numbered 1,100 members in 1527. This increase is chiefly ascribed to the agency of Denck, “who, with his vagabonds (wandering agitators), wished to establish his new Baptist order, and hid himself in a corner, where he secretly poured out his poison,” over this Urbanus Rhegius laments in a pamphlet against Denck.

Denck was certainly much favoured by circumstances in Augsburg; but a large part of the success he attained must be attributed to his zeal and intelligence. He and Hubmeier stood in the front rank of the vanguard of the Brethren. Peter Gynoraus, who lived in Augsburg in 1526, speaks of him as the “head of the Anabaptists.” Bucer calls him the “pope”; and in a letter to Zwingli of December 2, 1527, Halter calls him the “Apollo of the Anabaptists”.

As an able man of erudition and a philosopher, Denck directed his activity above all to divesting the Baptist doctrines of all that was material or “fleshly,” and to making them more “spiritual.” He was one of the foremost representatives of the more moderate (or perhaps more practical and placable) party among the Anabaptists, who chafed under the burden not only of the strict enforcement of the principle of community in goods, but of complete passivity towards the Government. It is true that the antagonism between the two parties did not attain to its full development in Germany; it first reached its climax in Moravia, where the community found more elbow-room, and could better allow itself the luxury of internal quarrels. But a new practical party in opposition to the old Zurich faction was beginning already to be conspicuous in Germany and especially in Augsburg, where the Brotherhood was exceedingly prosperous, and where also it included among its members representatives of the higher classes: of whom we may mention Eitelhans Langenmantel, “a burgess belonging to one of the first families in Augsburg.”

As was the case with the Bohemian Brethren, the larger part of the educated members of the Anabaptist community belonged to the moderate party. Next to Denck, the most prominent of these was Hubmeier, who, it is true, deserted the sect in Zurich, but again joined it as soon as he knew that the walls of Zurich were behind him.

Meanwhile there were men of education on the other side, e.g., Eitelhans Langenmantel, who, if the Short Discourse on the True Community is justly ascribed to him, made cause with the stricter form of communism.

The most determined advocate of the rigorous party was the bookbinder and accountant, Hans Hut, who, as we have seen, had been through the Münzer school, and was accused of being a member of the “Community of Wives in Common”.

Denck and Hut had already encountered each other at the second Augsburg Congress of the Brethren

Augsburg was so important a place that the two primary synods of the Baptists were held there. Among those who took part in the first of these, convened in the spring of 1526, were Hans Denck, Hans Hut, Ludwig Hätzer, and Balthasar Hubmeier. This Congress sanctioned the introduction of late Baptism into Germany, the practice having hitherto been confined to Switzerland.

Greater importance, however, attaches to the second Congress in August, 1527, which was attended by more than sixty delegates from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Its chief task was the organisation of the propaganda work, the sending of “apostles” into different districts, and perhaps also the settling of the programme, or “Confession”.

“ Unfortunately,” says Keller, who is our authority with regard to these two Congresses, “we are not in possession of the protocols of the resolutions passed by this assembly. It is certain, however, that after long debate (in which a difference arose between Denck and Hut) the delegates unanimously embodied their resolutions; and it was Denck’s propositions which carried the day.”

Together with the delegates to these two Congresses from the South Germany of that period, we meet with some from Austria, to which country Anabaptism had also penetrated; first of all to the parts of Tyrol bordering on Switzerland and the neighbouring mountain regions.

Tyrol at that time played a much more important part in economics and politics than she does to-day. In that province and in the district bordering on its eastern frontier, the mining industry was more highly developed than in any other land with the exception of Saxony and Bohemia. It could boast not only of rich iron and copper ores and salt deposits, but also of numerous veins of gold and silver. The large output of these mines must have contributed to the intensification of indigenous social antagonisms, though this effect was less evident in its mountainous regions than in those of Saxony. The chief cause of this difference lay in the inaccessibility of the country and the isolation and sterility of its lonely valleys. The inhabitants of the side valleys were untouched by the influence of the few commercial routes traversing the lofty mountain passes. Their wants remained those of olden times, and the ways and means of satisfying them had not changed. No prospect of gained allured the merchant into their pathless wilds, and the peasant produced no surplus for barter.

The wealth produced by the mining population, especially in the gold and silver mines, contributed but slightly to the encouragement of manufacture, for the chief shareholders of the mines of Tyrol were non-Tyrolese, the most important being the Fuggers and Hochstetters of Augsburg. Moreover, Spaniards also were among those who worked the Tyrolese mines. Even the share that fell to the sovereigns of the land, the Hapsburgs, did not remain in the country, but was scattered abroad in support of their foreign policy, going into the pockets of mercenaries from Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Spain, and enriching the ministers of various Courts whom it was necessary to bribe, as well as the German Electors and their officials.

Hence in Tyrol, though some districts were highly developed in economics, we find others which were very backward. The old constitution of the Markgenossenschaft still prevailed to a very great extent, and there was but little exploitation of peasants – at least north of the Brenner. The climax of class-antagonism was reached only in the towns and mining localities and their environs.

Hence when the waves of the Peasant War of 1525 beat upon the Tyrol and Salzburg Alps and created a stir among the population of those districts, it was not the peasants but the miners who stood at the head of the insurrection.

The military strength of the miners then became evident, and proved how dangerous the uprising in Thuringia might have been if the miners of that province had thrown themselves heartily into it. The rebellions of 1525 in Northern Tyrol and the Salzburg district were the only ones which were not suppressed by military force. They were conquered by moral means, i.e., by broken promises and by utilising the narrow spirit of local separatism, exhibited quite as plainly among the Salzburg miners as among the Mansfelders. A few of the more dangerous uprisings were subdued by the reform of some all too flagrant abuses, and a free hand was thus obtained for dealing with the other insurgents. After these had been defeated and time gained for the massing of troops, it became possible to subdue those districts which had remained unconquered.

Subjugated and depressed, yet without having suffered military defeat, the lower classes of Tyrol were every whit as discontented and ill-disposed after the Peasant War as those of South Germany, though not so disheartened.

This was the frame of mind in which they were found by the Anabaptist preachers from Switzerland and Bavaria, to whom it soon became clear that Tyrol offered a fertile soil for the growth of their doctrines.

The Baptist sect achieved its greatest success in the mining districts. Before the Peasant War these localities had gladly embraced Lutheranism, which in the countries of the Catholic Hapsburgs had borne the character of direct enmity to the ruling powers. “In addition to the clergy, laymen, and even miners, clerks of Court, students and others had the audacity to preach the new Gospels ... Enthusiasm for the new doctrines sprang up in all directions, the nucleus of the adversaries of the ancient Church being the Brotherhood at Schwaz, with its numerous adherents from the mining population.”

The year 1525 saw the beginning of the alienation of the democratic classes from Luther’s doctrine, which had emerged from its chrysalis as an enemy to their order; and, as soon as the doctrines of the Baptists became known to them, these classes eagerly went over to that sect.

As early as 1526 there were reports of certain “Brethren” in the valley of the Inn, among whom was Pilgrim Marbeck, a judge in the Court of Mines in the mining district of Rattenburg. In 1527, other centres of Anabaptism had been formed in Schwaz, Kitzbichel, Sterzing, Klauzen, &c., where the miners were the most zealous partisans of the Fraternity.

It may be incidentally mentioned that the number of weavers among the Tyrolese Baptists was surprisingly large; but there was no lack of members from other labouring classes, and they even had a few adherents belonging to the nobility.

The number of Baptists in Tyrol increased with extraordinary rapidity in the years immediately following the Peasant War, as it also did in the towns of South Germany.

But the period of unrestricted propagation in all these districts was extremely short; for hardly had the sect begun to get a noticeable following when the municipal and State authorities united in instituting a persecution against it. It was of no avail to the Baptists that even on the admission of their enemies) they led a submissive and peaceable life, and repudiated all tumults; these doctrines would, it was asserted, inevitably lead to a revolution. We find this argument used in a pamphlet against them written in the year 1528. (Ein kurzer Unterricht) “It is true,” the writer says, “that the Anabaptists enjoin obedience to the authorities; but this is only an artifice. They have devised their devilish doctrines for the sole purpose of making themselves great and powerful, and as soon as this object is attained they will set themselves up against the authorities and pursue their vile wantonness. He who teaches that all things are in common, has naught else in his mind than to excite the subjects against the rulers ordained by God, the poor against the rich, and to cause discontent and tumult.”

This argument must have met with cordial support from the ruling classes at the end of the third decade of the sixteenth century, when the remembrance of the Peasant War was still fresh. An additional cause for opposition to the Anabaptists lay in the fact that they threatened danger, not to the small villages, but to the rich and powerful cities; and finally it must not be overlooked that, in spite of their peaceableness a large contingent of the Anabaptists, and especially the proletarian adherents of Hut, could not conceal a vein of strongly rebellious sentiment. It is true that they all denounced every attempt at an armed insurrection as foolish and sinful; nevertheless many of them were convinced that the fall of the governing class was at hand, though they no longer relied on an internal uprising for the realisation of their wishes, but put their trust in a foreign war.

Even Hut built his hopes on the impending invasion of the Turks, which he proclaimed would result in the destruction of the Empire. While this was in progress the associates were to keep hidden, but show themselves as soon as the Turks had done their part in the work to be accomplished. He even went so far as to give an exact date for the beginning of the millennium, viz., Whitsuntide, 1528.

This was no chimera. The Turks really were approaching. The Sultan Suleiman came in 1529 instead of 1528; but though he succeeded in seizing Hungary he did not penetrate so far as Germany. He was driven back before the walls of Vienna, to the affliction not only of the zealous Anabaptists, but also of the more energetic among the Emperor’s princely opponents, especially Landgrave Philip of Hesse, so much extolled by patriotic historians.

The communists, therefore, were not the only “traitors to their country”.

The sympathy for the Turks shown by a section of the Anabaptists did not make public sentiment more favourable to them, above all in countries under the sway of the Emperor.

Persecution of the Anabaptists was the chief after-effect of the Peasant War; for it had aroused the thirst for blood and revenge among the ruling classes quite as much as it had terrorised them, and after its close they looked upon every sympathiser with the lower classes, however submissive and peaceable he might be, as a deadly enemy, who could not be too bitterly resisted or too cruelly punished.

Protestants and Catholics emulated each other in their persecution of the unfortunate sect. “The greatest amount of blood flowed in Catholic countries,” writes Cornelius (Münsterischen Aufruhr, ii. p.57). “In Germany the Protestants surpassed even the Catholics in rigorous and bloody persecution,” says Beck (Die Geschichtsbücher der Wiedertäufer, xviii.). Neither of the two parties, indeed, could boast of gaining the advantage in this respect.

Though in the year 1526 the persecution of the Baptists was limited to a few isolated cases, it increased in rigour with the accession of adherents to the sect. The year 1527 saw many executions of the. Brethren, but the universal, cruel chase really began in the following year, with an Imperial mandate of the 4th of January, which imposed the death penalty on all who espoused Anabaptism. This mandate was ratified by the Reichstag of Speir in 1529 – the one at which the evangelical party protested against every act of intolerance directed against them, and thus led to their being called “Protestants.”

In pursuance of the sixth clause in the decree of this Reichstag, the Baptists were to be killed like wild beasts as soon as captured, without the sentence of a judge, and even without judicial inquiry!

This decree did not remain a dead letter; indeed certain States added to its severity while carrying it out.

“Some,” writes one of the chroniclers of the Anabaptists, “were racked and drawn asunder; others burnt to ashes and dust; some roasted on pillars, torn with red-hot pincers or locked in together and burnt. Others were hanged on trees, beheaded with the sword, or thrown into the water. Many were gagged so that they could not speak, and in this manner led to their death.

“They were led to the slaughter and the shambles like sheep and lambs. Some either starved or rotted in darksome prisons; very many, before they were killed, being tormented with all sorts of torture. Some who were deemed too young for execution were whipped with rods, and many lay for years in dungeons and prisons. Numbers had holes burnt in their cheeks, and were then sent away. The remainder, who had escaped from all these things, were hunted from one country and place to another. Like owls and ravens, which dare not fly by day, they were often compelled to dwell in, and hide among rocks and clefts, in wild forests, or in caves and pits. In some places their Scriptural books were interdicted, and in many burnt.”

We may judge of the fury of the persecution from the fact that, with the exception of those who escaped by a natural death, nearly all the prominent Baptists came to a violent end. Among those who avoided this fate were the invalid Conrad Grebel, who died in Graubünden, in the summer of 1526, and Denck, who was carried off by the plague in Bâle at the end of the year 1527.

As has already been mentioned, the first martyr to the cause was Felix Manz; to be followed on May 21, 1527, by the erudite Michel Sattler of Staufen, in Breisgau, who had been a monk, but had joined the Brethren in 1524. He was taken prisoner at Rothenburg on the Neckar, “torn with redhot pincers and afterwards burnt, steadfast in God”. Hans Hut met his fate in Augsburg while attempting to escape from prison; and in 1528 Brödli and Hubmeier suffered a martyr’s death. In 1529 Langenmantel was executed, Blaurock burnt at the stake at Klausen in Tyrol, and Hätzer beheaded at Constance.

All who were sentenced to death met their end steadfastly and courageously; even Hubmeier, who, it is true, had previously exhibited considerable weakness. He was seized at Nikolsburg, in Moravia, in the summer of 1527, and dragged to Vienna, at the instance of Ferdinand (brother to the Emperor Charles), who had been in possession of the power of the Hapsburg House in Germany since 1521, and King of Hungary and Bohemia since 1526. In imitation of his conduct at Zurich in 1525 Hubmeier now sought to save himself by a recantation of his errors; even declaring his willingness to submit to the judgment of a Church Council as regards Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and simultaneously offering his good services to Ferdinand, the persecutor of heretics. In a memorial – his “account” – to the King, of January 3, 1528, after lauding Ferdinand’s well-known clemency, he prays that “Your Majesty would graciously and compassionately pardon me, an imprisoned and afflicted man now lying in a dungeon, in great.sickness, cold, and tribulation; for with God’s help I will so conduct, dispose, and restrain myself that it shall meet with your Royal Majesty’s approval. I promise with exceeding earnestness and diligence to direct the people to devotion, godly fear and obedience, as I have always prevailed upon myself to do.”

But all petitions and promises were in vain. As leader of the Waldshut opposition, Hubmeier had been a rebel to the Hapsburgs, and this was a crime never forgiven by that House.

When Hubmeier saw that his doom was sealed, he took courage, inspired by his brave wife Elizabeth, daughter of a burgess of Reichenau, on Lake Constance, whom he had married at Waldshut in 1524. She exhorted him to be brave, and he perished at the stake in Vienna, steadfast in his faith (1528). Three days afterwards his faithful wife was thrown into the Danube and drowned.

The weakness displayed by Hubmeier was very rare among the Baptists. One is astonished at the firmness and joy with which as a rule they went to their death. The Baptists glory in their heroes quite as much as Christian writers, who point to the noble deaths of the martyrs of primitive Christianity in proof of the sanctity and sublimity of their cause.

All this steadfastness and heroism, however, had but one consequence – viz., the enormous increase of Anabaptist martyrs, who, according to Sebastian Franck, already numbered 2,000 in 1530.

It is commonly asserted that ideas cannot be stamped out by violence. There are many proofs of the truth of this dictum, and it is comforting to all who are persecuted; but in this unqualified form it is not true. Admittedly, an idea itself cannot be annihilated by violence; but by itself alone an idea is a mere shadow, without any effective force. The. strength to which a social ideal attains – and it is only this kind of ideal which is under consideration – is dependent upon the individuals who uphold it – i.e., upon their power in society. If it is possible to annihilate a class which upholds a given idea, then that idea will perish with its advocates.

The sixteenth century belonged to governmental absolutism. Even in the few free cities, the power of the executive authority amongst the lower classes became continuously more unlimited. If absolutism had succeeded in mastering, the opposition of the knights, peasants, and petty burgesses, it could easily have crushed the communistic agitations of a few proletarians and powerless idealists. Anabaptism vanished in South Germany quite as suddenly as it had arisen. Relentless persecution was one of the causes, and indeed the most active cause of its rapid disappearance; but this was aided in no small degree by the circumstance that at the very moment the persecution began the Baptists found, outside of Germany, an asylum to which they flocked in large numbers. This asylum was Moravia – the America of the sixteenth century.

Chapter 5 (cont’d) |