Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

in episcopal blood. He too had made a revolution, had endangered

social order, had flouted authority not less divine than the

state's. He had made no protest against the secular appropriation of

ecclesiastical property, How otherwise than by force could peasants

better their lot when ballots were forbidden them, and their

oppressors daily wielded force? The peasants felt that the new

religion had sanctified their cause, had aroused them to hope and

action, and had deserted them in the hour of decision. Some of them,

in angry despair, became cynical atheists. `061746 Many of them, or

their children, shepherded by Jesuits, returned to the Catholic

fold. Some of them followed the radicals whom Luther had condemned,

and heard in the New Testament a summons to communism.

III. THE ANABAPTISTS TRY COMMUNISM: 1534-36

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Only by observing with what devout enthusiasm some of our

contemporaries adopt economic heresies can we understand the fervor

with which pious rebellious minorities followed, even to the stake,

one or another turn of the religious revolution in the sixteenth

century.

The most radical of the new sects took the name of Anabaptists

( Wiedertaufer, Again-Baptizers) from its insistence that baptism, if

given in infancy, should be repeated in maturity, and that still

better it should be deferred, as by John the Baptist, till the

mature recipient could knowingly and voluntarily make his profession

of the Christian faith. There were sects within this sect. Those who

followed Hans Denck and Ludwig Hatzer denied the divinity of Christ:

He was only the most godly of men, Who had redeemed us not by His

agony on the cross but by the example of His life. `061747 Denck

exalted the individual conscience above the Church, the state, and the

Bible itself. Most Anabaptists adopted a Puritan severity of morals

and simplicity of manners and dress. Developing with rash logic

Luther's idea of Christian liberty, they condemned all government by

force, and all resistance to it by force. They rejected military

service on the ground that it is invariably sinful to take human life.

Like the early Christians, they refused to swear oaths, not

excepting oaths of allegiance to prince or emperor. Their usual

salutation was "The peace of the Lord be with you"- an echo of the

Jewish and Moslem greeting, and a forerunner of the Quaker mode. While

Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox agreed with the popes on the

absurdity of religious toleration, the Anabaptists preached and

practiced it; one of them, Balthasar Hubmaier, wrote the first clear

defense of it (1524). `061748 They shunned public office and all

resort to litigation. They were Tolstoyan anarchists three centuries

before Tolstoy, and a century after Peter Chelcicky, from whom they

may have derived their creed. Consciously or unwittingly inheriting

the doctrine of the Bohemian Taborites or the Moravian Brethren,

some Anabaptists proclaimed a community of goods; `061749 a few, if we

may credit hostile chroniclers, proposed a community of wives. `061750

In general, however, the sect rejected any compulsory sharing of

goods, advocated voluntary mutual aid, and held that in the Kingdom of

Heaven communism would be automatic and universal. `061751 All the

Anabaptist groups were inspired by the Apocalypse and the confident

expectation of Christ's early return to the earth; many believers

professed to know the day and hour of His coming. Then all the

ungodly- in this case all but Anabaptists- would be swept away by

the sword of the Lord, and the elect would live in glory in a

terrestrial paradise without laws or marriage, and abounding in all

good things. `061752 So hopeful men steeled themselves against toil

and monogamy.

The Anabaptists appeared first in Switzerland. Perhaps a

pacifistic Christianity had seeped in from the Waldenses of southern

France and the Beghards of the Netherlands. Here and there, as in

Basel, a few intellectuals sponsored the idea of a communistic

society. Communistic passages in More's Utopia may have stirred

the scholars who gathered around Erasmus there. Three members of

that circle became Anabaptist leaders: Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz of

Zurich, and Balthasar Hubmaier of Waldshut- just across the border

in Austria. In 1524 Munzer visited Waldshut, Carlstadt came to Zurich,

and an Anabaptist sect formed in Zurich under the name of "Spirituals"

or "Brethren." It preached adult baptism and the coming of Christ,

rejected Church and state, and proposed an end to interest charges,

taxes, military service, tithes, and oaths.

At this time Ulrich Zwingli was winning the Great Council of

Zurich to his Protestant views, which included the control of religion

by the secular authorities. He pleaded with the "Brethren" to relax

their antipathy to the state, and to practice infant baptism; they

refused. The Council summoned them to a public disputation (January

17, 1525); failing to convert them, it decreed that the parents of

unbaptized children must leave the town. The Anabaptists denounced the

Council, called Zwingli an old dragon, and paraded the streets crying,

"Woe to Zurich!" `061753 Their leaders were arrested and banished,

which enabled them to spread their doctrines. Saint-Gall and Appenzell

took up the movement; Bern and Basel were stirred by it; Hubmaier

won nearly all Waldshut to his views. In Appenzell 1,200 men and

women, accepting literally the words of Christ- "Take no thought

what ye shall eat"- sat down and waited for God to come and feed

them. `061754

The apparent success of the Peasants' War in the spring of 1525

promoted these conversions, but its failure encouraged the

propertied classes in the Swiss cities to repressive measures. The

Council of Zurich arrested Manz (July), then Grebel, then Hubmaier,

and ordered that all obstinate Anabaptists "should be laid in the

tower," kept on bread and water, and "left to die and rot." `061755

Grebel did; Manz was drowned; Hubmaier recanted, was freed, recanted

his recantation, and undertook to convert Augsburg and Moravia; Hatzer

was beheaded at Constance for Anabaptism and adultery. Protestant

and Catholic cantons showed equal energy in subduing the sect, and

by 1530 nothing remained of it in Switzerland except some secret and

negligible bands.

Meanwhile the movement had spread like a rumor through South

Germany. A zeal for evangelistic propaganda caught the converts, and

turned them into ardent missionaries for the new creed. In Augsburg

Denck and Hubmaier made rapid headway among the textile workers and

the lower middle class. In Tirol many miners, contrasting their

poverty with the wealth of the Fuggers and Hochstetters who owned

the mines, took up Anabaptism when the Peasants' Revolt collapsed.

In Strasbourg the struggle between Catholics and Protestants allowed

the sect to multiply unnoticed for a time. But a pamphlet of 1528

warned the authorities that "he who teaches that all things are" to be

"in common has naught else in mind than to excite the poor against the

rich, the subjects against the rulers ordained by God." `061756 In

that year Charles V issued a mandate making rebaptism a capital crime.

The Diet of Speyer (1529) ratified the Emperor's edict, and ordered

that Anabaptists everywhere were to be killed like wild beasts as soon

as taken, without judge or trial. An Anabaptist chronicler, perhaps

exaggerating, reported the result in the mood of early Christian

hagiographers:

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Some were racked and drawn asunder; others were burnt to ashes and

dust; some were roasted on pillars or torn with red-hot pincers....

Others were hanged on trees, beheaded with the sword, or thrown into

the water.... Some starved or rotted in darksome prisons.... Some

who were deemed too young for execution were whipped with rods, and

many lay for years in dungeons.... Numbers had holes burnt into

their cheeks.... The rest were hunted from one country and place to

another. Like owls and ravens, which durst not fly by day, they were

often compelled to hide and live in rocks and clefts, in wild forests,

or in caves and pits. `061757

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By 1530, says the contemporary Sebastian Franck, 2,000 Anabaptists

had been put to death. In one Alsatian city, Ensisheim, 600 were

executed. In Salzburg those who recanted were allowed to have their

heads cut off before being placed upon the pyre; the unrepentant

were roasted to death over a slow fire (1528). `061758 Anabaptists

composed touching hymns to commemorate these martyrdoms; and most of

the hymn writers became martyrs in their turn.

Despite these killings the sect increased, and moved into northern

Germany. In Prussia and Wurttemberg some nobles welcomed the

Anabaptists as peaceful and industrious farmers. In Saxony, says an

early Lutheran historian, the valley of the Werra was filled with

them, and in Erfurt they claimed to have sent forth 300 missionaries

to convert the dying world. In Lubeck, Jurgen Wullenwever, who was

accused of Anabaptism, briefly captured control of the city (1533-34).

In Moravia, Hubmaier made progress with his moderate doctrine, which

explained communism not as "common property," but as holding that "one

should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the

naked, for in truth we are not masters of our possessions, but

stewards or dispensers only." `061759 Hans Hut, fired by the teachings

of Munzer, won the Anabaptists of Moravia away from Hubmaier by

preaching a full community of goods. Hubmaier retired to Vienna, where

he was burned at the stake, and his wife was thrown bound into the

Danube (1528).

Hut and his followers established a communist center at

Austerlitz, where, as if foreseeing Napoleon, they renounced all

military service, and denounced every kind of war. Confining

themselves to tillage and petty industry, these Anabaptists maintained

their communism for almost a century. The nobles who owned the land

protected them as enriching the estates by their conscientious toil.

Farming was communal among them; materials for agriculture and

handicraft were bought and allotted by communal officers; part of

the proceeds was paid to the landlord as rent, the rest was

distributed according to need. The social unit was not the family

but the Haushabe, or household, containing some 400 to 2,000

persons, with a common kitchen, a common laundry, a school, a

hospital, and a brewery. Children, after weaning, were brought up in

common, but monogamy remained. In the Thirty Years' War, by an

Imperial edict of 1622, this communistic society was suppressed; its

members accepted Catholicism or were banished. Some of the exiles went

to Russia, some to Hungary. We shall hear of them again.

In the Netherlands Melchior Hofmann, a Swabian tanner, preached

the Anabaptist gospel with exciting success. At Leyden his pupil Jan

Matthys rose to the conclusion that the advent of the New Jerusalem

could no longer be patiently awaited, but must be achieved at once,

and, if necessary, by force. He sent out through Holland twelve

apostles to announce the glad tidings. The ablest of them was a

young tailor, Jan Beuckelszoon, known to history as John of Leyden,

and to Meyerbeer's opera as Le Prophete. Without formal education,

he had a keen mind, a vivid imagination, a handsome presence, a

ready tongue, a resolute will. He wrote and staged plays, and composed

poetry. Coming upon the writings of Thomas Munzer, he felt that all

other forms of Christianity than that which had gained and lost

Muhlhausen were halfhearted and insincere. He heard Jan Matthys and

was won to Anabaptism (1533). He was then twenty-four. In that year he

accepted a fatal invitation to come and preach in Munster, the rich

and populous capital of Westphalia.

Named from the monastery around which it had grown, Munster was

feudally subject to its bishop and cathedral chapter. Nevertheless the

growth of industry and commerce had generated a degree of democracy.

The assembled citizens, representing seventeen guilds, annually

chose ten electors, who chose the city council. But the well-to-do

minority provided most of the political ability, and naturally

dominated the council. In 1525, enthusiastic over the peasants'

uprisings, the lower classes presented thirty-six "demands" to the

council. A few of these were granted, the rest were humored with

procrastination. A Lutheran preacher, Bernard Rottman, made himself

the mouthpiece of discontent, and asked Jan Matthys to send some Dutch

Anabaptists to his aid. John of Leyden came (January 13, 1534), and

soon Jan Matthys himself. Fearing insurrection, the "party of order"

arranged to have Bishop Franz von Waldeck enter the town with his

2,000 troops. The populace, led by Matthys, Rottman, and John of

Leyden, fought them in the streets, drove them out, and took martial

control of Munster (February 10, 1534). New elections were held; the

Anabaptists won the council; two of their number, Knipperdollingk

and Kippenbroick, were chosen burgomasters; the exciting experiment

began.

Munster found itself at once in a state of war, besieged by the

Bishop and his reinforced army, and fearful that soon all the powers

of order and custom in Germany would unite against it. To protect

itself against internal opposition, the new council decreed that all

non-Anabaptists must accept rebaptism or leave the city. It was a

cruel measure, for it meant that old men, women carrying infants,

and barefoot children had to ride or trudge from the town at the

height of a German winter. During the siege both sides executed

without mercy any persons found working for the enemy. Under the

stress of war the council was superseded by a popular assembly and

an executive Committee of Public Safety, in both of which the

religious leaders were supreme. Matthys died fighting in an abortive

sortie (April 5, 1534), and thereafter John of Leyden ruled the city

as its king.

The "communism" that was now set up was a war economy, as perhaps

all strict communism must be; for men are by nature unequal, and can

be induced to share their goods and fortunes only by a vital and

common danger; internal liberty varies with external security, and

communism breaks under the tensions of peace. In peril of their

lives if they fell short of unity, inspired by religious faith and

inescapable eloquence, the besieged accepted a "socialist

theocracy" `061760 in the desperate hope that they were realizing

the New Jerusalem visioned in the Apocalypse. The members of the

Committee of Public Safety were called "the elders of the twelve

tribes of Israel," and John of Leyden became "King of Israel." Perhaps

to give, in the minds of the simple, some helpful dignity to his

precarious office, John, along with his aides, clothed himself in

the splendid garments left behind by wealthy exiles. Enemies further

accused the radical chiefs of eating abundantly while the besieged

population neared starvation; the evidence is inconclusive, and

leaders always feel an urgent obligation to keep well. Most of the

confiscated luxuries were distributed among the people; "the poorest

among us," wrote one of them, "now go about sumptuously

attired"; `061761 they hungered in magnificence.

Otherwise the communism of Munster was limited and tentative. The

rulers, according to a hostile witness, decreed that "all

possessions should be in common," `061762 but in truth private

property continued in practically everything except jewels, precious

metals, and the booty of war. Meals were taken in common, but only

by those engaged in defense of the town. At these meals a chapter

was read from the Bible, and sacred songs were sung. Three "deacons"

were appointed to supply the necessities of the poor; and to secure

materials for these charities the remaining well-to-do were

persuaded or compelled to yield up their superfluity. Land available

for cultivation within the city was assigned to each household

according to its size. One edict confirmed the traditional dominion of

the husband over the wife. `061763

Public morals were regulated by strict laws. Dances, games, and

religious plays were encouraged, under supervision, but drunkenness

and gambling were severely punished, prostitution was banned,

fornication and adultery were made capital crimes. An excess of women,

caused by the flight of many men, moved the leaders to decree, on

the basis of Biblical precedents, that unattached women should

become "companions of wives"- in effect, concubines. `061764 The newly

attached women seem to have accepted the situation as preferable to

solitary barrenness. Some conservatives in the city protested,

organized a revolt, and imprisoned the King; but their soldiers,

soon besotted with wine, were slaughtered by the resurgent

Anabaptist soldiery; and in this victory of the New Jerusalem the

women played a virile role. John, released and re-enthroned, took

several wives and (say the hostile chroniclers) governed with violence

and tyranny. `061765 He must have had some genial qualities, for

thousands gladly bore his rule, and offered their lives in his

service. When he called for volunteers to follow him in a sortie

against the Bishop's camp, more women enlisted than he thought it wise

to use. When he asked for "apostles" to venture forth and seek aid

from other Anabaptist groups, twelve men tried to get through the

enemy's lines, were all caught, and all killed. One fervent woman,

inspired by the story of Judith, sallied out to assassinate the

Bishop; she was intercepted and put to death.

Though many Anabaptists in Germany and Holland repudiated the resort

of their Munster brethren to force, many more applauded the

revolution. Cologne, Trier, Amsterdam, and Leyden murmured with

Anabaptist prayers for its success. From Amsterdam fifty vessels

sailed (March 22 and 25, 1535) to carry reinforcements to the

beleaguered city, but all were dispersed by the Dutch authorities.

On March 28, echoing the Munster uprising, an Anabaptist band captured

and fortified a monastery in West Friesland; it was overcome with a

loss of 800 lives.

Confronted with this spreading revolt, the conservative forces of

the Empire, Protestant as well as Catholic, mobilized to suppress

Anabaptism everywhere. Luther, who in 1528 had counseled lenience with

the new heretics, advised in 1530 "the use of the sword" against

them as "not only blasphemous but highly seditious"; `061766 and

Melanchthon concurred. City after city sent money or men to the

Bishop; a diet at Worms (April 4, 1535) ordered a tax on all Germany

to finance the siege. The Bishop was now able to surround the town and

effectively shut off all its supplies.

Facing famine and deteriorating morale. King John announced that all

who wished might leave the city. Many women and children, and some

men, seized the opportunity. The men were imprisoned or killed by

the Bishop's soldiers, who spared the women for divers services. One

of the emigres saved his life by offering to show the besiegers an

undefended part of the walls. Under his guidance a force of

Landsknechts scaled them and opened a gate (June 24); soon several

thousand troops poured into the town. Starvation had so far done its

work that only 800 of the besieged could still bear arms. They

barricaded themselves in the market place; then they surrendered on

a promise of a safe-conduct to leave Munster; when they had yielded up

their arms they were massacred en masse. Houses were searched, and

400 hidden survivors were slain. John of Leyden and two of his aides

were bound to stakes; every part of their bodies was clawed with

red-hot pincers, until nearly all who were standing in the market

place were sickened by the stench"; their tongues were pulled from

their mouths; at last daggers were driven into their hearts. `061767

The Bishop regained his city and augmented his former power;

henceforth all actions of the civil authorities were to be subject

to episcopal veto. Catholicism was triumphantly restored. Throughout

the Empire the Anabaptists, fearing for their lives, repudiated

every member guilty of using force. Nevertheless many of these

pacifist heretics were executed. Melanchthon and Luther advised Philip

of Hesse to put to death all adherents of the sect. `061768 The

conservative leaders felt that so serious a threat to the

established economic and political order should be punished with an

unforgettable severity.

The Anabaptists accepted the lesson, postponed communism to the

millennium, and resigned themselves to the practice of such of their

principles- of sober, simple, pious, peaceful living- as did not

offend the state. Menno Simons, a Catholic priest converted to

Anabaptism (1531), gave to his Dutch and German followers such

skillful guidance that the "Mennonites" survived all tribulations, and

formed successful agricultural communities in Holland, Russia, and

America. There is no clear filiation between the Continental

Anabaptists and the English Quakers and the American Baptists; but the

Quaker rejection of war and oaths, and the Baptist insistence on adult

baptism probably stem from the same traditions of creed and conduct

that in Switzerland, Germany, and Holland took Anabaptist

forms. `061769 One quality nearly all these groups had in common-

their willingness to bear peaceably with faiths other than their

own. The theology that supported them through hardship, poverty, and

martyrdom hardly accords with our transient philosophy; but they, too,

in their sincerity, devotion, and friendliness, enriched our heritage,

and redeemed our tarnished humanity. *06044

CHAPTER XVIII: Zwingli: The Reformation in Switzerland: 1477-1531

I. MULTUM IN PARVO

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THE success of the Swiss cantons in repelling the assault of Charles

the Bold (1477) strengthened their Confederation, fired their pride of

nationality, and steeled them to withstand the attempt of Maximilian

to subject them in fact as well as in theory to the Holy Roman Empire.

Disputes over the division of the spoils after the defeat of

Burgundy brought the cantons close to civil war; but at the Diet of

Stans (1481) a hermit philosopher, Nikolaus von der Flue- Bruder Klaus

in Swiss memory- persuaded them to peace.

Canton by canton the sturdy Confederation grew. Fribourg and

Solothurn were admitted in 1481, Basel and Schaffhausen in 1501,

Appenzell in 1513; now they were thirteen, all speaking German

dialects, except that French too was spoken in Fribourg and Bern. They

formed a federal republic: each canton regulated its internal affairs,

but was governed in its external relations by a common legislature.

The single chamber of this federal diet was composed of an equal

number of deputies from each canton. Democracy was not complete;

several cantons appropriated minor communities as voteless vassals.

Nor was Switzerland as yet a model lover of peace. In 1500-12 the

cantons took advantage of Italian disruption to seize Bellinzona,

Locarno, Lugano, and other regions south of the Alps; and they

continued to lease Swiss legions- with their consent- to foreign

powers. But after the defeat of the Swiss pikemen at Marignano

(1515) the Confederation renounced territorial expansion, adopted a

policy of neutrality, and directed its virile peasantry, its

skillful artisans, and its resourceful merchants in developing one

of the most civilized civilizations in history.

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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