THE ANABAPTISTS
Every generation has a bogey-man all its own.
We have our “Reds.”
Our fathers had their Socialists.
Our grandfathers had their Molly Maguires.
Our great-great-grandfathers had their Jacobins.
And our ancestors of three hundred years ago were not a bit better off.
They had their Anabaptists.
The most popular “Outline of History” of the sixteenth century was a
certain “World Book” or chronicle, which Sebastian Frank, soap-boiler,
prohibitionist and author, living in the good city of Ulm, published in
the year 1534.
Sebastian knew the Anabaptists. He had married into an Anabaptist family.
He did not share their views, for he was a confirmed free-thinker. But
this is what he wrote about them: “that they taught nothing but love and
faith and the crucifixion of the flesh, that they manifested patience and
humility under all suffering, assisted one another with true helpfulness,
called each other brother and believed in having all things in common.”
It is surely a curious thing that people of whom all those nice things
could be truthfully said should for almost a hundred years have been
hunted down like wild animals, and should have been exposed to all the
most cruel punishments of the most bloodthirsty of centuries.
But there was a reason and in order to appreciate it you must remember
certain facts about the Reformation.
The Reformation really settled nothing.
It gave the world two prisons instead of one, made a book infallible in
the place of a man and established (or rather, tried to establish) a rule
by black garbed ministers instead of white garbed priests.
Such meager results after half a century of struggle and sacrifice had
filled the hearts of millions of people with desperate disappointment.
They had expected a millennium of social and religious righteousness
and they were not at all prepared for a new Gehenna of persecution and
economic slavery.
They had been ready for a great adventure. Then something had happened.
They had slipped between the wall and the ship. And they had been obliged
to strike out for themselves and keep above water as best they could.
They were in a terrible position. They had left the old church. Their
conscience did not allow them to join the new faith. Officially they had,
therefore, ceased to exist. And yet they lived. They breathed. They were
sure that they were God’s beloved children. As such it was their duty to
keep on living and breathing, that they might save a wicked world from
its own folly.
Eventually they survived, but do not ask how!
Deprived of their old associations, they were forced to form groups of
their own, to look for a new leadership.
But what man in his senses would take up with these poor fanatics?
As a result, shoemakers with second sight and hysterical midwives with
visions and hallucinations assumed the rôle of prophets and prophetesses
and they prayed and preached and raved until the rafters of their
dingy meeting places shook with the hosannas of the faithful and the
tip-staffs of the village were forced to take notice of the unseemly
disturbance.
Then half a dozen men and women were sent to jail and their High and
Mightinesses, the town councilors, began what was good-naturedly called
“an investigation.”
These people did not go to the Catholic Church. They did not worship in
the Protestant kirk. Then would they please explain who they were and
what they believed?
To give the poor councilors their due, they were in a difficult
predicament. For their prisoners were the most uncomfortable of all
heretics, people who took their religious convictions absolutely
seriously. Many of the most respectable reformers were of this earth
earthy and willingly made such small compromises as were absolutely
necessary, if one hoped to lead an agreeable and respectable existence.
Your true Anabaptist was of a different caliber. He frowned upon all
half-way measures. Jesus had told his followers to turn the other cheek
when smitten by an enemy, and had taught that all those who take the
sword shall perish by the sword. To the Anabaptists this meant a positive
ordinance to use no violence. They did not care to dilly-dally with
words and murmur that circumstances alter cases, that, of course, they
were against war, but that this was a different kind of a war and that
therefore they felt that for this once God would not mind if they threw a
few bombs or fired an occasional torpedo.
A divine ordinance was a divine ordinance, and that was all there was to
it.
And so they refused to enlist and refused to carry arms and in case they
were arrested for their pacifism (for that is what their enemies called
this sort of applied Christianity) they went willingly forth to meet
their fate and recited Matthew xxvi: 52 until death made an end to their
suffering.
But anti-militarism was only a small detail in their program of
queerness. Jesus had preached that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom
of Caesar were two entirely different entities and could not and should
not be reconciled. Very well. These words were clear. Henceforth all
good Anabaptists carefully abstained from taking part in their country’s
government, refused to hold public office and spent the time which other
people wasted upon politics, reading and studying the holy scriptures.
Jesus had cautioned his disciples against unseemly quarrels and the
Anabaptists would rather lose their rightful possessions than submit a
difference of opinion to a law court.
There were several other points which set these peculiar people apart
from the rest of the world, but these few examples of their odd behavior
will explain the suspicion and detestation in which they were held by
their fat and happy neighbors who invariably mixed their piety with a
dose of that comfortable doctrine which bids us live and let live.
Even so, the Anabaptists, like the Baptists and many other dissenters,
might in the end have discovered a way to placate the authorities, if
only they had been able to protect themselves from their own friends.
Undoubtedly there are many honest Bolshevists who dearly love their
fellow proletarians and who spend their waking hours trying to make this
world a better and happier place. But when the average person hears
the word “Bolshevik,” he thinks of Moscow and of a reign of terror
established by a handful of scholarly cut-throats, of jails full of
innocent people and firing squads jeering at the victims they are about
to shoot. This picture may be slightly unfair, but it is no more than
natural that it should be part of the popular myth after the unspeakable
things which have happened in Russia during the last seven years.
The really good and peaceful Anabaptists of the sixteenth century
suffered from a similar disadvantage. As a sect they were suspected of
many strange crimes, and with good reason. In the first place, they were
inveterate Bible readers. This, of course, is not a crime at all, but let
me finish my sentence. The Anabaptists studied the scriptures without any
discrimination and that is a very dangerous thing when one has a strong
predilection for the Book of Revelation.
This strange work which even as late as the fifth century was rejected
as a bit of “spurious writing” was just the sort of thing to appeal to
people who lived during a period of intense emotional passions. The exile
of Patmos spoke a language which these poor, hunted creatures understood.
When his impotent rage drove him into hysterical prophecies anent the
modern Babylon, all the Anabaptists shouted amen and prayed for the
speedy coming of the New Heaven and the New Earth.
It was not the first time that weak minds gave way under the stress of
a great excitement. And almost every persecution of the Anabaptists was
followed by violent outbursts of religious insanity. Men and women would
rush naked through the streets, announcing the end of the world, trying
to indulge in weird sacrifices that the fury of God might be appeased.
Old hags would enter the divine services of some other sect and break up
the meeting, stridently shrieking nonsense about the coming of the Dragon.
Of course, this sort of affliction (in a mild degree) is always with us.
Read the daily papers and you will see how in some remote hamlet of Ohio
or Iowa or Florida a woman has butchered her husband with a meat cleaver
because “she was told to do so” by the voice of an angel; or how an
otherwise reasonable father has just killed his wife and eight children
in anticipation of the sounding of the Seven Trumpets. Such cases,
however, are rare exceptions. They can be easily handled by the local
police and they really do not have great influence upon the life or the
safety of the Republic.
But what had happened in the year 1534 in the good town of Münster was
something very different. There the New Zion, upon strictly Anabaptist
principles, had actually been proclaimed.
And people all over northern Europe shuddered when they thought of that
terrible winter and spring.
The villain in the case was a good-looking young tailor by the name of
Jan Beukelszoon. History knows him as John of Leiden, for Jan was a
native of that industrious little city and had spent his childhood along
the banks of the sluggish old Rhine. Like all other apprentices of that
day, he had traveled extensively and had wandered far and wide to learn
the secrets of his trade.
He could read and write just enough to produce an occasional play, but
he had no real education. Neither was he possessed of that humility of
spirit which we so often find in people who are conscious of their social
disadvantages and their lack of knowledge. But he was a very good-looking
young man, endowed with unlimited cheek and as vain as a peacock.
After a long absence in England and Germany, he went back to his native
land and set up in the cloak and suit business. At the same time he went
in for religion and that was the beginning of his extraordinary career.
For he became a disciple of Thomas Münzer.
This man Münzer, a baker by profession, was a famous character. He was
one of the three Anabaptist prophets who, in the year 1521, had suddenly
made their appearance in Wittenberg that they might show Luther how to
find the true road to salvation. Although they had acted with the best
of intentions, their efforts had not been appreciated and they had been
chased out of the Protestant stronghold with the request that never again
they show their unwelcome selves within the jurisdiction of the Dukes of
Saxony.
Came the year 1534 and the Anabaptists had suffered so many defeats that
they decided to risk everything on one big, bold stroke.
That they selected the town of Münster in Westphalia as the spot
for their final experiment surprised no one. Franz von Waldeck, the
prince-bishop of that city, was a drunken bounder who for years had lived
openly with a score of women and who ever since his sixteenth year had
offended all decent people by the outrageous bad taste of his private
conduct. When the town went Protestant, he compromised. But being known
far and wide for a liar and a cheat, his treaty of peace did not give
his Protestant subjects that feeling of personal security without which
life is indeed a very uncomfortable experience. In consequence whereof
the inhabitants of Münster remained in a state of high agitation until
the next elections. These brought a surprise. The city government fell
into the hands of the Anabaptists. The chairman became one Bernard
Knipperdollinck, a cloth merchant by day and a prophet after dark.
The bishop took one look at his new councilors and fled.
It was then that John of Leiden appeared upon the scene. He had come to
Münster as the apostle of a certain Jan Matthysz, a Haarlem baker who had
started a new sect of his own and was regarded as a very holy man. And
when he heard of the great blow that had been struck for the good cause,
he remained to help celebrate the victory and purge the bishopric of all
popish contamination. The Anabaptists were nothing if not thorough. They
turned the churches into stone quarries. They confiscated the convents
for the benefit of the homeless. All books except the Bible were publicly
burned. And as a fitting climax, those who refused to be re-baptized
after the Anabaptist fashion were driven into the camp of the Bishop, who
decapitated them or drowned them on the general principle that they were
heretics and small loss to the community.
That was the prologue.
The play itself was no less terrible.
From far and wide the high priests of half a hundred new creeds hastened
to the New Jerusalem. There they were joined by all those who believed
themselves possessed of a call for the great uplift, honest and sincere
citizens, but as innocent as babes when it came to politics or statecraft.
The siege of Münster lasted five months and during that time, every
scheme, system and program of social and spiritual regeneration was tried
out; every new-fangled prophet had his day in court.
But, of course, a little town chuck full of fugitives, pestilence and
hunger, was not a fit place for a sociological laboratory and the
dissensions and quarrels between the different factions lamed all the
efforts of the military leaders. During that crisis John the tailor
stepped forward.
The short hour of his glory had come.
In that community of starving men and suffering children, all things
were possible. John began his régime by introducing an exact replica of
that old theocratic form of government of which he had read in his Old
Testament. The burghers of Münster were divided into the twelve tribes
of Israel and John himself was chosen to be their king. He had already
married the daughter of one prophet, Knipperdollinck. Now he married the
widow of another, the wife of his former master, John Matthysz. Next he
remembered Solomon and added a couple of concubines. And then the ghastly
farce began.
All day long John sat on the throne of David in the market place and all
day long the people stood by while the royal court chaplain read the
latest batch of ordinances. These came fast and furiously, for the fate
of the city was daily growing more desperate and the people were in dire
need.
John, however, was an optimist and thoroughly believed in the omnipotence
of paper decrees.
The people complained that they were hungry. John promised that he would
tend to it. And forthwith a royal ukase, duly signed by His Majesty,
ordained that all wealth in the city be divided equally among the rich
and the poor, that the streets be broken up and used as vegetable
gardens, that all meals be eaten in common.
So far so good. But there were those who said that some of the rich
people had hidden part of their treasures. John bade his subjects not to
worry. A second decree proclaimed that all those who broke a single law
of the community would be immediately decapitated. And, mind you, such
a warning was no idle threat. For this royal tailor was as handy with
his sword as with his scissors and frequently undertook to be his own
executioner.
Then came the period of hallucinations when the populace suffered from a
diversity of religious manias; when the market place was crowded day and
night with thousands of men and women, awaiting the trumpet blasts of
the angel Gabriel.
Then came the period of terror, when the prophet kept up the courage of
his flock by a constant orgy of blood and cut the throat of one of his
own queens.
And then came the terrible day of retribution when two citizens in their
despair opened the gates to the soldiers of the bishop and when the
prophet, locked in an iron cage, was shown at all the Westphalian country
fairs and was finally tortured to death.
A weird episode, but of terrible consequence to many a God-fearing and
simple soul.
From that moment on, all Anabaptists were outlawed. Such leaders as
had escaped the carnage of Münster were hunted down like rabbits and
were killed wherever found. From every pulpit, ministers and priests
fulminated against the Anabaptists and with many curses and anathemas
they denounced them as communists and traitors and rebels, who wanted to
upset the existing order of things and deserved less mercy than wolves or
mad dogs.
Rarely has a heresy hunt been so successful. As a sect, the Anabaptists
ceased to exist. But a strange thing happened. Many of their ideas
continued to live, were picked up by other denominations, were
incorporated into all sorts of religious and philosophic systems, became
respectable, and are today part and parcel of everybody’s spiritual and
intellectual inheritance.
It is a simple thing to state such a fact. To explain how it actually
came about, that is quite a different story.
Almost without exception the Anabaptists belonged to that class of
society which regards an inkstand as an unnecessary luxury.
Anabaptist history, therefore, was writ by those who regarded the sect
as a particularly venomous land of denominational radicalism. Only now,
after a century of study, are we beginning to understand the great
rôle the ideas of these humble peasants and artisans have played in
the further development of a more rational and more tolerant form of
Christianity.
But ideas are like lightning. One never knows where they will strike
next. And what is the use of lightning rods in Münster, when the storm
breaks loose over Sienna?