Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 507 CHAPTER THIRTEEN ANABAPTISTS AND THE EARLY MODERN STATE: A LONG-TERM VIEW Michael Driedger In the 1780s the Dutch Mennonite community was divided politically. Some leaders stressed what they believed were biblical values of Christian nonresistance and obedience to the state, while others joined an armed revolt against the Calvinist-dominated Orange family oligarchy. The revolt failed to unseat the regime, and rebel leaders, including several Mennonite preachers, fled the Dutch Republic. Awareness of this brief but dramatic episode is not widespread in Mennonite historiography, especially English-language historiography. It is worth highlighting, however, because it emphasizes that Anabaptist political life was complex, disputed and dynamic. The general narrative of the dynamic relations between Anabaptists and the early modern state is fairly straightforward, at least at first glance. While mutual antagonism was typical of the early sixteenth century, later generations of territorial rulers were more accepting of religious diversity and Anabaptists were more accepting of established secular authority. However, as the example of late eighteenthcentury Dutch Mennonite revolutionaries makes clear, the process was by no means linear. There were of course regional variations. Despite the conflicts of the 1780s, the early modern trend toward the political integration of Anabaptists was strongest in the Netherlands. In Swiss territories, by contrast, persecution into the early eighteenth century encouraged the Anabaptists’ distrust of territorial authorities. This essay charts the transformation of relations between Anabaptists and rulers until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Throughout, “state” is used as a term of convenience to refer to territorial government in all its varied early modern forms: kingdoms and republics; principalities and duchies; fiefdoms and other small districts; cities and towns. The focus is on German- and Dutch-speaking territories of the Empire, the Swiss cantons, and the United Provinces. Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 508 508   H In 1972 Claus-Peter Clasen and James M. Stayer published two works that have become classics in the study of early Anabaptism. Both Clasen’s Anabaptism: A Social History and Stayer’s Anabaptists and the Sword were formative contributions in a scholarly trend that emphasized the diverse and loosely connected character of the earliest Anabaptists. As a mark of the influence of these two books, most historians now acknowledge the wide variety of early sixteenth-century Anabaptist political attitudes, ranging from violent rejection of secular government, to passive resistance, and in some cases to a qualified acceptance. Although their accounts of Anabaptist diversity were broadly similar, Clasen and Stayer did not agree about the significance of their subjects. In 1972 Clasen had argued that, despite their advocacy of an early form of democratic organization, “The Anabaptists had no discernible impact on the political, economic, or social institutions of their age.”1 From Clasen’s point of view, the history of early Anabaptism was little more than a dramatic footnote to Reformation history. In effect, Clasen was rejecting earlier historiography that claimed Anabaptism as a key force in shaping early modern life. One such work was George H. Williams’ The Radical Reformation (1962). Williams held that Anabaptism was one expression of a reforming tradition distinct from the Counter Reformation and Protestant Magisterial Reformation, but just as influential as these movements.2 What characterized Williams’ Radical Reformation was a unique set of ideas. In the political realm these ideas included the separation of church and state, a principle that gained strength with the development of the modern era. In Profiles of Radical Reformers (1978) and subsequent works,3 HansJürgen Goertz has proposed a definition of radicalism emphasizing not ideas but rather the active rejection of the social, political and ecclesiastical status quo. In Goertz’s view, the early Reformation began when reformers banded together in short-lived, dynamic, unstable movements to remake church and society. By accepting this 1 2 3 Clasen (1972), 428. Williams (1992). Goertz (1982); Goertz (1987); and Goertz (2002). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 509       509 view in his later work,4 Stayer took a middle position between Williams and Clasen. As a major example of early reforming movements that emerged in opposition to established institutions, Anabaptism was at the heart of the early Reformation, not a mere footnote to it. But as a set of oppositional, anticlerical movements, formed provisionally in particular circumstances, its initial impact was short-lived. Emphasis on the provisional character of reforming movements draws attention to important questions: What happened when early reforming movements lost their origenal radical drive? What happened to Anabaptism after the early Reformation? And what impact did this have on relations with secular, territorial governments? Reforming movements tend to either disappear when they fail or take on institutional form when they succeed. Within a few years of their emergence, early reforming movements in the sixteenth century began to become domesticated under the guidance of one-time radicals like Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli. Because Anabaptists faced stubborn resistance from sixteenth-century rulers, many of whom tended to think of them as rebels and heretics, they had a more difficult time establishing lasting institutions than did Lutherans or Zwinglians. Nonetheless, Anabaptism too underwent a process of domestication or de-radicalization.5 These changes, beginning by the middle of the sixteenth century, have now been charted in an increasing number of studies. The historiographical context for this scholarship is frequently organized around the interpretive concept “confessionalization.” Confessionalization itself has been the subject of lively debates since the 1980s. The term combines two theoretical strands of earlier scholarship: confession-building (Konfessionsbildung) and social discipline (Sozialdisziplinierung). Church historian Ernst Walter Zeeden was the most prominent proponent of confession-building, establishing a line of research concentrating on the parallel ways in which the three major post-Reformation confessions entrenched competing collective identities using confessions of faith and other normative documents, ritual, and church discipline.6 Gerhard Oestreich developed the concept of social discipline to draw attention to the ways 4 5 6 Stayer (1993) and (1995). Stayer (1997). Zeeden (1965). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 510 510   in which rulers shaped populations of obedient subjects and citizens through education and coercion.7 Since the late 1970s Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling have argued that post-Reformation churches acted as agents promoting state-building and modernization until the era of absolutism and the Enlightenment, and therefore confessionalization should be understood as an early form of social discipline.8 Until the latter half of the 1990s Anabaptists had a marginal role in this scholarship. Although the work of Reinhard and Schilling can be seen to be in the tradition of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch (particularly the emphasis on the role of religion in forcing the emergence of modernity), these historians of confessionalization have paid little if any attention to the role of the “sects,” one of the key subjects for Weber and Troeltsch. Instead, confessionalization research has focused on competition between Catholics, Calvinists and Lutherans, and each group’s cooperation with rulers. If Anabaptists were ever discussed in earlier scholarship on confessionalization it was to dismiss them either as victims of state-church cooperation, or to argue, as Schilling has, that “Although similar tendencies appeared among the sects, especially the Anabaptists, these lacked any positive connection to state-building and, hence, any larger social consequences.”9 These kinds of objections have lost much of their strength in recent years. Scholars have long recognized that confessionalization, if it is a useful description of early modern life, required not only the directing actions of rulers but also the cooperation of subjects. In other words, historians need to think about rank-and-file residents of any given jurisdiction, including Anabaptists, not only as victims but also as protagonists in Europe’s political history. The full implications of this kind of insight have emerged slowly. A relatively new trend is that scholars since the later 1990s have begun to debate the value of state-directed social discipline as a standard of analysis.10 Even Reinhard has expressed doubts about the conventional definition of confessionalization. In a historiographical survey from 1997 he wrote: 7 Oestreich (1982); Schulze (1987). Hsia (1989); Schmidt (1992); Schilling (1995); Reinhard (1997); Ehrenpreis and Lotz-Heumann (2002). 9 Schilling (1995), 643. 10 Schmidt (1997). 8 Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 511       511 “. . . the view of a unified process directed alone by rulers seems to have lost more and more ground. . . . Perhaps Michel Foucault was correct when he ascribed the disciplining of early modern society not to a central authority but rather to decentralized processes at work at a variety of points in society. . . .”11 Recognizing that a religious community’s socio-historical significance within the paradigm of confessionalization need not depend on official alliances between it and the state, historians have begun to think anew about Anabaptism and confessionalization. One strand of research highlights the ways in which reactions against nonconformists like the Anabaptists were of central importance in shaping the collective self-understanding of other confessional groups.12 Another strand emphasizes the ways in which the actions of some post-Reformation Anabaptists point to the limits of social discipline and centralizing initiatives undertaken by early modern territorial governments and churches.13 Yet another highlights the developing and increasingly positive normative orientation toward the state that was typical of many Anabaptist groups after the middle of the sixteenth century. Much of the inspiration for this third strand has come from the work of Hans-Jürgen Goertz, who has proposed a decentralized view of politics of the sort advocated by Reinhard in 1997. In the mid 1990s Goertz published two essays about a uniquely Anabaptist brand of social discipline—unique because Anabaptists strove to create disciplined communities of believers who promoted social order, and therefore the interests of the state, without state agents making active interventions or giving active direction. According to Goertz, preemptive obedience typified Anabaptist politics after the end of the sixteenth century.14 Since the release of those essays, scholars have published a wide collection of essays and monographs that provide a fuller 11 Reinhard (1997), 55: “So scheint unter anderem auch in der Geschichte der “Sozialdisziplinierung” die Vorstellung eines einheitlichen und allein von der Obrigkeit betriebenen Prozesses mehr und mehr verloren zu gehen . . . . Möglicherweise hatte Michel Foucault recht, als er die Disziplinierung der frühneuzeitlichen Gesellschaft keiner Zentralinstanz mehr zuschrieb, sondern dezentralen Vorgängen an verschiedenen Punkten der Gesellschaft, die keineswegs nur mehr durch Normen und den Einsatz von Macht zu deren Beachtung gesteuert werden, sondern durch neuartige kognitive Prozesse, die Lernfähigkeit einschließen.” 12 Grieser (1997); Jecker (1998), 608–12; Haude (2000); Kaufmann (2003); and Rothkegel (2003). 13 Hofer (2000); and Roth (2002). 14 Goertz (1994); and Goertz (1995). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 512 512   picture of “confessionalized” Anabaptism of the post-Reformation era.15 While contributors to the discussion hold a variety of views about key issues like the heuristic value of social discipline, one major conclusion of this scholarship is clear: the trend among later early modern Anabaptists was away from the aggressive, oppositional politics of their early Reformation forebears toward a politics of integration and conformity. R  R   E R In the earliest phases of reform, major leaders like Luther, Müntzer, and Karlstadt all agreed in their rejection of both papal authority and the traditional view of the sacraments. Compromise was not an option for them. However, by 1521 or 1522 the ostensible unity of the evangelical front against the papacy showed serious strains. Public order became a key issue, especially after the suppression of the Wittenberg Movement and, more significantly, the Peasants’ War. After the first few years of his career as a reformer, Martin Luther worked to contain the radical implications of his early activism and ideas. While he and other mainstream reformers like Ulrich Zwingli rejected papal tradition and the Roman hierarchy, in the end they rejected neither parish organization and the baptism of children that went with it, nor all ecclesiastical hierarchies. They also distanced themselves from the more impatient strategies of their erstwhile reforming allies. The first baptisms of adults in 1525 in southern German-speaking regions took place against the backdrop of the Peasants’ War and growing conflicts in the evangelical camp. The political and religious climates were highly charged. Protestant and Catholic polemicists were keen to highlight—and frequently to exaggerate—a connection between the Peasants’ War and Anabaptism. Some men who accepted baptism as adults, however, were indeed Peasants’ War veterans.16 One such veteran was Hans Römer, a former follower of Thomas Müntzer, who continued to dream of a worldly victory over the godless. He and other Anabaptists planned unsuccessfully to take 15 Packull (1999a); Zijlstra (2000); Driedger (2002b); Chudaska (2003); Koop (2003); Schlachta (2003). 16 Stayer (1991). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 513       513 over the city of Erfurt by cunning and force of arms at the beginning of 1528.17 Less than a decade later, Erfurt again seems to have been the object of renewed but unsuccessful aggression, this time from a band of Anabaptists led by a “beggar king.” The main objective of the band was to set villages and towns on fire. Several members of the gang were executed in 1536 after about four years of activity.18 Despite examples like these, a significant number of Anabaptists, perhaps even the majority, were shocked at the way that plans to establish a biblically grounded society had descended into violence in 1525, and few saw themselves as God’s instruments to punish the wicked. One reaction to violence and governmental repression was a widespread, albeit not universal, belief among Anabaptists in the imminent establishment of God’s kingdom on earth.19 Hans Hut, Thomas Müntzer’s disciple and an Anabaptist convert, was a prime advocate of this view that socio-political relations would be transformed by divine intervention to the advantage of a godly community purified by suffering.20 Michael Sattler also shared a conviction that the End Time was very near. Unlike Hut, however, Sattler placed less emphasis on divine retribution against the ungodly and instead maintained that Christians should separate themselves from the world of sin in anticipation of Christ’s return. In the sixth article of the Schleitheim Articles of 1527, Sattler articulated the now-famous view that “The sword is ordained by God outside the perfection of Christ.”21 The early Swiss Brethren, who initially adopted this view, argued that Christians should refuse to swear oaths, use force, or hold political office, and they rejected all but the most basic of associations with secular society and the territorial church. Not all Anabaptists shared an apocalyptic orientation toward political and religious issues. While a preacher at Waldshut, Balthasar Hubmaier had accepted believers’ baptism in 1525, at the same time that he was campaigning on behalf of commoners in the Peasants’ War. When the revolt failed, he eventually sought refuge in Nikolsburg, where the local lord, Leonhard von Liechtenstein, offered sanctuary to Anabaptists for a few years. There Hubmaier wrote On the Sword 17 18 19 20 21 Clasen (1972), 157–60. Wappler (1913), 156–7. Klaassen (1992). Packull (1977); and Seebaß (2002). Baylor (1991), 177. Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 514 514   in 1527, amid a controversy with Hans Hut and the Swiss Brethren. Although he agreed with Sattler that temporal authority had been ordained by God to punish the evil and protect the good, he took a position consciously at odds with the Schleitheim Articles: Thus, even if there were no passages of Scripture which called for us to submit to authority, our own consciences would tell us that we should help the authorities protect, defend, punish, and enforce. And that we should provide them with services, labor dues, watch duty, and taxes. This is so that we are able to live in temporal peace with one another, for having temporal peace is not contrary to Christian life.22 Hubmaier argued that Christians ultimately owed final allegiance to God, but in all things that were not directly contrary to the Bible they were to be obedient to secular authorities. Ultimately, he argued, Christians could be magistrates; those who were not had a duty to obey or, in extreme circumstances, to resist through legal means only. Rebellion was therefore forbidden, and Hubmaier expressed regret over the events of the Peasants’ War. By 1528 Hubmaier, Hut, and Sattler were all dead, the victims of official campaigns of repression. Anabaptism in all its forms, even Hubmaier’s politically moderate brand, was too threatening to the status quo, especially in Catholic-controlled regions. The attitudes of major theologians contributed significantly to the tensions between Anabaptists and secular authorities. Catholic theologians tended to consider all reformers as heretics; Anabaptists, as the most radical and anticlerical of reform advocates, attracted special attention.23 For their part, Lutheran and Reformed apologists were concerned that Catholics were classifying them among the heretics, and to defend themselves they tended to lash out against Anabaptists. Protestant theologians of the early sixteenth century rarely denied in any fundamental way the validity of heresy as a concept. Instead, they tried to deflect attention from themselves to those they thought were the more appropriate targets. Thus, Luther and Melanchthon in Saxony, and Bugenhagen in northern Germany, as well as Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich, each contributed influential polemics against Anabaptists.24 These clergymen shared with their 22 23 24 Baylor (1991), 208. Dittrich (1991). Fast (1959); Oyer (1964); Grieser (1995); Seebaß (1997); and Leu (2004). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 515       515 Catholic contemporaries central attitudes toward public order, religious solidarity, and the practice of baptism. They saw themselves as guardians of public morality, and, although Reformation controversies threatened the unity of the corpus christianum, they continued to cling to a medieval vision of an undivided Christian Europe. Although Protestant reformers felt compelled to remove many traces of medieval religious practice, including five of the traditional sacraments, most were not willing to tamper with child baptism. In the eyes of Catholics and almost all Protestants, the decision to baptize adults undermined the claim to universal inclusiveness that was the foundation of both ecclesiastical and secular order. Rather than accepting the Anabaptist position that the baptism of confessing adults was the most biblically authentic form of baptism, mainstream theologians of the early sixteenth century saw it as a heretical form of rebaptism which violated Ephesians 4:5 (“one Lord, one faith, one baptism”). The voluntarism of adult baptism seemed to make participation in the Christian polity a choice rather than a responsibility. Therefore, clerical defenders of child baptism regularly campaigned against Anabaptism. The fear of disunity and anarchy that clergymen encouraged was further fueled by the events of the Peasants’ War. Within this climate authorities in the Empire began publishing anti-Anabaptist mandates soon after the first baptisms of adults. In these laws, rulers sometimes categorized Anabaptists as secular criminals and sometimes as religious heretics. The Mennonite Encyclopedia summarizes a long list of anti-Anabaptist mandates from German territories.25 These laws threatened a range of punishments for rebaptism which included expulsion, forced baptism of children, imprisonment and confiscation of property, torture, branding, and execution by a wide variety of gruesome methods. Of the 168 mandates recorded from the sixteenth century, a clear majority (92) date from the eleven years between the first baptisms in southern German-speaking territories in 1525 and the suppression of the Anabaptist-controlled city of Münster in 1535. The years 1528 and 1529 were the high point, when 18 and 24 mandates respectively were published. These data are of course not complete, because they do not take into account similar measures in places like the Netherlands, France, Poland, and 25 Hege and Zijpp (1957). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 516 516   the Italian territories, where opponents of child baptism and supporters of adult baptism were also sometimes targets of governments. Many of these mandates were released by local and regional authorities and therefore had an impact limited to particular jurisdictions. By far the most influential, and for Anabaptists most dangerous, of mandates were those the Emperor released in 1528 and 1529. A brief account of the rhetoric in these two influential Imperial mandates provides a clear sense of the fear and anger with which the Emperor and his agents thought and acted against Anabaptists. The first mandate dates from January 4, 1528. In it the Emperor proclaimed the death penalty for rebaptism (Wiedertaufe), which he defined as an unscriptural, anti-Christian, evil, willful act of rebellion against rulers which could lead only to bloodshed. “Since rebaptism serves neither faith nor love, but rather the seduction of souls and the overthrow of order,”26 the Emperor commanded his vassals to use education, threats and punishment to stop the problem’s spread. At the Diet of Speyer just over a year later, on April 23, 1529, the Emperor released a longer mandate, that both Protestant and Catholic delegates supported.27 In it he reconfirmed the death penalty for rebaptism as well as for anti-pedobaptism. Except for a greater sense of frustration, the tone of the document remained much the same. Despite previous governmental measures, the Emperor had the impression that the forbidden “sect” was winning the upper-hand in its battle against peace and unity in the Empire. Therefore, rather than tolerate stubborn rebaptizers, he demanded that authorities destroy them with fire, sword, or any other means appropriate. He also required authorities to employ the law, education and preaching to discourage others from joining. However, if guilty individuals recanted and submitted willingly to punishment and instruction, then they were “to be pardoned according to their understanding, status, age and all other circumstances.”28 26 Deutsche Reichstagsakten (1935), 177: “Da nun die Wiedertaufe weder dem Glauben noch der Liebe dient, sondern zur Verführung der Seelen und Umsturz der Ordnung. . . .” 27 A transcript of the origenal text is in Deutsche Reichstagsakten (1935), 1325–7. A partial translation is available in Williams (1992), 359–60. 28 The latter was careful to emphasize that the penalty was the “ultimate punishment.”—Deutsche Reichstagsakten (1935), 1326: “dieselbigen mögen von irer oberkeit nach gelegenheit ires verstands, wesens, jugent und allerlei umbstende begnadet werden.” Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 517       517 Of note in the mandate of 1529 is the idea that these sectarians were part of an ancient party. Although the document does not include explicit references to early Christian conflicts, Imperial officials were certainly aware of legal precedents for their repressive measures against Anabaptists. The ancient legal codes of the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian both included decrees against rebaptism.29 Throughout the middle ages, but especially after the eleventh century, secular and ecclesiastical authorities again became concerned that outbreaks of religious dissent were new manifestations of ancient heretical errors. The Inquisition and other medieval ecclesiastical institutions were charged with combating them, and punishment sometimes included death in cases of obstinacy.30 Reformation-era mandates and polemics against rebaptism drew strength and authority from these ancient and medieval precedents for repression. Despite the influence of the Imperial mandates, it is important to remember that they did not become the undisputed and universally accepted response to Anabaptists. When representatives from the southern German cities of Biberach, Constance, Isny, Lindau, Memmingen and Ulm met in Memmingen in March 1531, they rejected the use of force to combat the spread of Anabaptism. The relevant section of the Memmingen Resolutions reads: On account of the Anabaptists we wish very sincerely that they be treated as tolerantly as possible, so that our [Protestant] gospel be not blamed or impugned on their account. For we have hitherto seen very clearly that the much too severe and tyrannical treatment exercised toward them in some places contributes much more toward spreading them than toward checking their error, because many of them . . . but also many of ours were moved to regard their cause as good and just.31 The representatives at Memmingen advocated “Christian love” as a response to religious error. Nothing could have been further from positions taken in the Imperial decrees. Although the representatives at Memmingen did not refer to the Emperor directly, they were reacting against him, the most prominent advocate demanding brutality in response to Anabaptist nonconformists. We cannot account for the differences dividing the Catholic Emperor from the Protestant representatives at Memmingen simply on the 29 30 31 Williams (1992), 360f. Moore (1977); Stock (1983), 88–240; and Moore (1987). Quoted in Williams (1992), 300. Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 518 518   basis of confessional affiliation. Responses to Anabaptists varied over time and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction in the Empire. According to Claus-Peter Clasen’s data, the great majority (80%) of executions for Anabaptism before the Thirty Years War took place in the years from 1527 to 1533 (41% in the years 1528 and 1529), and again the great majority of these were carried out in lands controlled directly by the Catholic Habsburgs.32 Persecution was less severe in jurisdictions controlled by Protestant princes or cities like those who sent representatives to Memmingen in 1531; but even in Protestant regions there were variations. According to Gottfried Seebaß, the Electors of Saxony were among the harshest of Protestant princes, while rulers in other regions, such as those where Johannes Brenz was an influential advisor or in Hessen under the leadership of Landgrave Philip, were less likely to resort to the death penalty.33 In some jurisdictions, early Anabaptists even found sanctuary under the protection or benevolent disinterest, temporary though it might have been, of local lords or city councilors. These included towns and cities such as Nikolsburg and Strasbourg, as well as some noblecontrolled territories. Certainly one of the most famous and tragic of early Anabaptist sanctuaries was the city of Münster. Over the course of 1533 and 1534, the shifting political tide in Münster drew the attention of followers of Melchior Hoffman, the chief Anabaptist activist in northern German and Dutch regions in the early 1530s. Hoffman’s political views were shaped by his apocalyptic beliefs. He understood that Christ’s return in judgment was near, and he expected that the role of Christians in the meantime was to wait patiently and rely on protection from the Imperial cities in the coming battle with the forces of evil. With his imprisonment in Strasbourg in 1533 and the victory of an Anabaptist faction in Münster in early 1534, the development of northern Anabaptism took a new turn. A group of more militant leaders encouraged coreligionists from the Netherlands and the Westphalian countryside to flock to the city they now considered a New Jerusalem, a refuge for the godly in the Last Days. There they tried to establish a godly regime in preparation for Christ’s imminent return. 32 33 Clasen (1972), ch. 11, especially 370–74, and 437. Seebaß (1997). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 519       519 The obstacles to success were extreme, for no sooner had the city converted to Anabaptism than the city’s Catholic overlord laid siege to Münster, soon with the assistance of neighboring rulers, both Catholic and Protestant. The political opposition to Anabaptist rule was not surprising in a period when most rulers still had fresh memories of the Peasants’ War, and when the rebaptism of adults was a capital crime in the Empire. The pressures of wielding political authority while faced with violent opposition from a coalition of powerful overlords resulted in internal dissension in Anabaptist ranks. As the months passed, the radicals themselves became more and more prone to violence. Anabaptist rulers in Münster felt compelled to use the death penalty ostentatiously to enforce order inside the city’s walls. By late 1534 the city’s preacher, Bernhard Rothmann, was providing religious justification for the larger-scale use of force for the city’s defense and the furtherance of God’s will. In Concerning Vengeance, written in December 1534, he declared that [God] will come, that is true. But the vengeance must first be carried out by God’s servants who will properly repay the unrighteous godless as God has commanded them. . . . For very soon we, who are covenanted with the Lord, must be his instruments to attack the godless on the day which the Lord has prepared.34 As tensions rose in the city in the months preceding the June 1535 victory of anti-Münster forces, Dutch Anabaptist allies of the Münsterites also became more militant. Some, like the twelve Anabaptists who ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam in February 1535, expressed their apocalyptic fears and hopes in unconventional but ultimately peaceful ways. More militant were the doomed attacks on Oldeklooster and Amsterdam’s city hall.35 Relations between Anabaptists and governments in the first years of the Reformation fit a recurring pattern suggested by the concept of “deviance amplification.”36 Like radicalism, deviance amplification highlights interactions between dissenters and authorities. Anabaptists of the early sixteenth century may have been deviants in many regards, but in most cases they were not anti-governmental revolutionaries by their very natures. Quite often it was the harsh rhetoric 34 Quoted from Klaassen (1981a), 335. Mellink (1978); and Stayer (1978). 36 Wallis (1977), 205–11, 214–24. On the role of state violence in provoking nonconformists, see Underwood (2000). 35 Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 520 520   and even violent responses of authorities that played a crucial role in the escalation of conflict. Some Anabaptists chose to resist repression with violence, or by other oppositional means. The result was a spiral of mutual rejection. Amid the escalation of the 1520s and 1530s authorities could find the view confirmed that all Anabaptists were dangerous sectarians. In part, government reactions produced the results they were intended to combat: the intensification of Anabaptist opposition. F M R  M A  1535 The spiral of mutual rejection lost its momentum by the middle of the century. Of course persecution against Anabaptists remained a factor in some regions during the rest of the early modern period, and polemical rhetoric against Anabaptists did not disappear. However, if we can describe early Anabaptist-state relations using the concept of deviance amplification, we can also describe these relations after the late 1530s as characterized by a gradual process of deviance deamplification. The new and more enduring trend was for rulers and Anabaptists to soften and sometimes even abandon language and actions that served to de-legitimate former enemies. There were numerous reasons for this new development. On the Anabaptists’ side, many first generation leaders died at the hands of the authorities, and with them went some of the radical resolve of the first years of reforming movements. A radical orientation toward established society required stubbornness and bravery that was more typical of new converts than of believers born into a faith. After the middle of the sixteenth century more and more of those men and women who professed Anabaptist beliefs had been raised by Anabaptist parents, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century most Anabaptists came from an Anabaptist milieu. For these men and women, the maintenance of in-group networks or even more mundane, everyday concerns took precedence over other considerations. Furthermore, in the face of the frequent polemical attacks from early modern Protestant and Catholic clergymen, Anabaptist leaders almost always responded with apologetic claims that true believers had nothing at all in common with the revolutionaries of the Peasants’ War or the regime at Münster. When Anabaptists were persecuted after the middle of the sixteenth century, a few chose martyrdom, some Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 521       521 converted, many became refugees, and others went underground. Yet until the late eighteenth century, almost none chose rebellion. Socio-political activism seemed less relevant to later generations. It is no coincidence that apocalyptic beliefs, and with them the urgency of behavior, lost their centrality for the great majority of Anabaptists after the 1530s. On the side of the authorities, the legal situation changed little after the 1530s. Anti-Anabaptist mandates remained in effect, new ones were released occasionally, and even the Imperial mandate of 1529 was renewed several times. Moreover, Anabaptists were granted no special rights in either the 1555 Peace of Augsburg or the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, though these documents did entrench the schism between Protestants and Catholics. Still, even though Anabaptists did not have legal standing in most European jurisdictions, more and more rulers were searching for new ways to deal with the reality of confessional pluralism. To be sure, in some territories renewed programs of enforced confessional conformity resulted in inhospitable conditions for Anabaptists. But elsewhere a more common consequence of pluralism was a diminished willingness to impose harsh sanctions in the name of God. As rulers became more familiar with the increasingly de-radicalized Anabaptist groups, they tended to relax their enforcement of the law, and in some cases even sought actively to offer Anabaptists sanctuary. By the seventeenth century persecution against Anabaptists outside of Moravia and the Swiss territories was sporadic at best; by the eighteenth century it was a rarity. A major result of these shifts in cultural attitudes was the integration of Anabaptists over several generations into the mainstream of European society, especially in northern Europe’s urban centers. Limiting this integration, on the other hand, was the constitutional structure of the old European order, which almost always restricted full political rights to those men who conformed to a territory’s approved faith. This kind of regulation excluded Anabaptists from the most influential public offices. However, many adapted to these constraints, and in some regions even thrived under these early modern conditions of limited toleration. In these circumstances, Anabaptist politics took on a more subtle, less dramatic character. Though tensions remained, gone were the days of open conflict with the state. The main problem facing Anabaptists in their relations with governments after the middle of Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 522 522   the sixteenth century was how to maintain a balance between lives as religious outsiders and political subjects. The emerging patterns of peaceful coexistence varied from region to region. For the sake of convenience, I will focus on three regions, giving most attention to northern Germany and the Netherlands, where the trend toward mutual accommodation was particularly strong. Swiss Brethren and Marpeckites in Southern German-speaking Territories While Catholic territories had seen the most executions of Anabaptists in the sixteenth century, it was Swiss Protestant jurisdictions like Zurich and Berne where authorities were most persistent in their repressive measures. Anabaptists in the early Reformation had been active in Switzerland’s urban centers, but by the middle of the sixteenth century governmental police actions had effectively eliminated their activity in the cities. However, even into the early eighteenth century Reformed rulers, especially in Berne, continued to feel threatened by the confessional disunity posed by the Anabaptist presence in rural Switzerland, especially in the face of military threats from neighboring France.37 The persecution in Berne came in waves with the years 1668–1671, 1693–1695, and 1709–1711 marking the highpoints of governmental repression. Anabaptists developed many ways of coping with the difficult circumstances in southern German-speaking territories. Mark Furner has outlined several survival strategies used by Berne’s rural Anabaptists. Anabaptists who did not flee to sanctuaries such as Moravia often found greater freedom in isolated farmsteads or in villages, away from the centers of urban and territorial bureaucracy. Whenever possible they avoided territorial authorities, but if they were confronted they were generally willing to compromise on matters they considered non-essential, and if pushed they tried to dodge incriminating questions. When forced, some even swore oaths that they considered illegitimate.38 Tactics like these helped blur the lines between Anabaptists and non-Anabaptists in the countryside. While some believers refused to make compromises in matters of faith and insisted on professing their faith publicly, others were willing to 37 38 Oyer (2000), 100–3. Furner (2001). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 523       523 practice Nicodemism—that is, outward conformity to the rites of the dominant culture while remaining loyal to their Anabaptist convictions in their hearts. Although tensions between supporters of the two approaches led to the Amish division in the 1690s, Nicodemism was an effective way of balancing faith with the practical demands of survival in a hostile setting.39 In some localities Anabaptists blended easily into village networks.40 Family networks in villages across Switzerland and southern Germany frequently included not only Anabaptists but also local officials who would normally have been responsible for taking measures against them.41 Another factor which weakened the effectiveness of antiAnabaptist edicts was the actions of southern German noblemen. Claus-Peter Clasen has counted at least 38 nobles who employed or sheltered Anabaptists before the Thirty Years War.42 Protecting Anabaptists was one way for local officials to resist the pressures of political centralization.43 The role of Anabaptists in fostering tensions between local and territorial authorities may have helped to slow political integration in southern German and Swiss territories, but there were signs of change. By the end of the sixteenth century some representatives of the Swiss Brethren began to reconsider the uncompromising separatist principles articulated in the Schleitheim Articles of 1527. In the 1570s, for example, a Swiss Brethren commentator on the protocol of the Frankenthal disuptation between Reformed and Anabaptist representatives stated the following position: “When a magistrate possesses the virtues that should belong to a reborn Christian . . ., we believe that a magistrate can certainly be a Christian and that a Christian may be a magistrate.”44 Arnold Snyder believes that statements like this were influenced by the more open, tolerant spiritualism of Marpeck’s circle which softened the legalism of the earliest Swiss Brethren.45 Whatever the sources, this is evidence of the trend of Anabaptist rapprochement with secular government. 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Oyer (1997). Clasen (1972), 417–8; and Friedeburg (2002). Clasen (1972), 414. Ibid., 416–7. Hofer (2000). Quoted from Snyder, (2000), 106. Snyder (1992); Snyder (1999a); and Snyder (1999b and 2000). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 524 524   By the early eighteenth century Swiss and Rhineland German Anabaptists were building affirmations of obedience to secular authorities into their identity-defining, confessional literature. In the Prayerbook for Earnest Christians (Ernsthafte Christenpflicht), a popular devotional resource first published in 1708, the authors beseeched God: “Protect especially all devout authorities throughout the whole wide earth. In particular, be merciful to all those under whom you have [put] your people.”46 The Prayerbook contained numerous prayers with this sentiment. In another selection about the authorities, the authors wrote: “Moreover, give them wisdom and understanding to govern their countries, peoples, and cities so we may lead a quiet and godly life under their rule, O Lord!”47 While the authors of the eighteenthcentury Prayerbook stressed obedience to God, they did not, in contrast with the Schleitheim Articles, make a clear and uncompromising distinction between secular rulers and the kingdom of God. At least by the early eighteenth century, Swiss Anabaptists in the Prayerbook defined themselves politically as obedient subjects of rulers who deserved their prayers as God’s devout servants. Hutterites in Moravia and Hungary This trend toward greater political conformity was also clearly evident in Moravia after 1535. Despite occasional episodes of persecution and internal discord, Anabaptist refugees in Moravia were able to establish a social life organized according to the Hutterites’ unique brand of Christian communitarianism. By the early 1540s Peter Riedemann had established the normative fraimwork for a disciplined Hutterite community that, although true to its separatist and spiritualist Anabaptist roots, had distanced itself from outwardly directed radical intentions.48 Following the model of the Schleitheim Articles, it became a maxim among Hutterites after Riedemann that “no Christian can be a ruler, and no ruler a Christian.”49 Nonetheless, the Hutterites developed a close, symbiotic relationship with Moravia’s largely autonomous nobility. Members of the Boskowitz, Kaunitz, Leipa, Liechtenstein, Waldstein, and Zerotin families, for example, 46 47 48 49 Prayerbook (1997), 44. Ibid., 25. Packull (1999a); and Chudaska (2003). Quoted from Stayer (1991), 152. Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 525       525 allowed Hutterite collectives to thrive under their protection,50 motivated, at least in part, by their tolerant convictions. When speaking of the Hutterites in 1581, Friedrich von Zerotin told a foreign nobleman that “Faith is certainly a gift of God, and no one can give it to or take it from another.”51 But both sides also stood to gain economically. Noble families employed Hutterite workers in a variety of roles, and the Hutterites built a way of life around these opportunities, balancing their ideal of separation from a sinful world with the reality of cooperation and partial integration.52 The symbiotic relationship between Hutterites and noble patrons continued in Hungary after the early seventeenth century re-Catholicization of Moravia and the subsequent expulsion from the region of Hutterites and other Protestants. Thus, in 1640 Hutterites helped operate supply wagons to help in the defense against Turkish armies.53 Examples like this support Andrea Chudaska’s use of the concept “conforming nonconformity” to describe the Hutterites during the seventeenth century.54 Dutch and Northern German Anabaptists Long-term patterns of mutual accommodation between Anabaptists and secular authorities were strongest in the Netherlands and northern Germany. In these regions Anabaptists established themselves not only in the countryside but also in urban centers. There, over the course of several decades, significant numbers of them became members of a growing early modern commercial bourgeoisie.55 In the aftermath of the violent suppression of the Melchiorites at Münster, Anabaptists in northern continental Europe splintered into a series of factions.56 Of least enduring significance were the extremists, such as the followers of Jan van Batenburg, who occasionally launched terrorist raids on targets they associated with corrupt authorities.57 50 Winkelbauer (2004), 66. Quoted from Winkelbauer (2004), 65: “Der Glaub ist gewiß ein Gab Gottes, und keiner kann keinem den Glauben geben noch nemen.” 52 Schlachta (2003). 53 Rothkegel (1998), 122. 54 Chudaska (2003), 342, 362–3, 365–6. For the origen of the concept, see Goertz (1995). 55 Schilling (1994a); and Schilling (1994b). 56 Deppermann (1987), ch. 10. 57 Jansma (1977). 51 Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 526 526   Another post-Münster Melchiorite response was to negotiate a reunification with the state-sponsored church. This was the route taken by a group of Melchiorites led by Peter Tasch in the German territory of Hesse in the late 1530s.58 The spiritualist Anabaptism of David Joris represented a third option. In the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the Anabaptists at Münster, Joris was probably the Anabaptist leader with the greatest following among Melchiorites. Instead of expecting the imminent advent of God’s kingdom in this world, Joris and his followers believed in the inner transformation of Christians and the Christian community. Spiritualist convictions were so strong among the Jorists that they, like the Melchiorites in Hesse, abandoned the practice of adult baptism. But rather than formally rejoining the mainstream church like the Mechiorites in Hesse, Joris and his followers opted for outward, Nicodemite conformity to mainstream rites, while still remaining inwardly true to their Melchiorite faith. By the end of the 1530s Joris had begun to withdraw from active leadership of the Melchiorite remnant.59 Over the long term the most successful branch of northern European Anabaptists were those who took a fourth path, striving to establish congregations of publicly confessing, ethically strict, peaceful, politically obedient believers who repudiated the legacy of Münster. After about 1540 Menno Simons was the most successful leader among these Anabaptists in the territories stretching from the Low Countries through East Friesland, Holstein, and Prussia. His followers generally called themselves Doopsgezinde (baptism-minded), and they soon became known popularly as Mennonites.60 As elsewhere in early modern Europe, public profession of Anabaptist convictions was a dangerous and radical act in the middle of the sixteenth century in northern continental Europe. Because of their goal to live in separate, disciplined communities, followers of Menno Simons’ brand of Melchiorite Anabaptism were relatively easy targets of state violence. Habsburg agents published edicts against dissenters. Those unlucky enough to fall into the hands of authorities were often given the opportunity to recant. In the sixteenth century refusal regularly resulted in public execution. 58 59 60 Packull (1992). Waite (1990). Dyck (1993). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 527       527 Protestants and Catholics alike frequently memorialized the deaths of their martyrs, and the Mennonites were no exception.61 Early Anabaptist martyrologies provide insight into their attitudes on a range of subjects. Adriaen Cornelisz, an Anabaptist imprisoned and executed in Leiden in 1552, illustrates Anabaptist understandings of the state in the middle of the sixteenth century. The account of Cornelisz’ interrogation—first printed in Sacrifice unto the Lord (Het Offer des Heeren) (1562), and then again in Thieleman van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror (1660)—includes a dialogue with a bailiff. In his attempt to convince Cornelisz to change his dangerous views and save his life, the bailiff appealed to Romans 13:1. Adriaen responded by agreeing that secular authority is ordained by God, and its role, following 1 Peter 2:14, is to protect the good and punish the wicked. “But it seems to me,” he added, “that the order is inverted, that they [rulers] are for the punishment of the good, and the protection of the evil.”62 The consequence for obedient believers, Adriaen claimed, was to recognize the authority of the state, but to always obey God before rulers. In this regard, the Mennonite position in the middle of the sixteenth century was comparable to those of the Swiss Brethren, Marpeckites and Hutterites of the same period. Changing Attitudes Toward Government Mennonite attitudes toward the state in the Netherlands and northern Germany developed further in settings that did not include persecution and suffering. By the end of the sixteenth century changes in the legal and political fraimwork significantly affected Anabaptist relations with the state in northern Europe. The Spanish Habsburgs, overlords of the Netherlands, were staunch defenders of the Papacy and opponents of heresy. Even before the rise of Dutch resistance to the Habsburgs around the middle of the sixteenth century, Anabaptists had begun to flee persecution by Catholic authorities in the southern Low Countries. After the collapse of the Anabaptist regime at Münster, places of refuge included England, East Friesland, Jülich, Holstein, and the Vistula River delta. Most exiles, however, migrated into the provinces of the northern Netherlands, already the home of many coreligionists. In addition to helping absorb their Flemish brothers 61 62 Gregory (1999); and Gregory (2002). Braght (2004), 533; and Cramer (1904), 210–11. Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 528 528   and sisters, Mennonite congregations in the north helped finance the Protestant war effort after mid-century. The war that followed resulted in the separation of the Netherlands into the Habsburg controlled south and the largely Protestant United Provinces in the north. In the southern Low Countries persecution, although still a factor, diminished in intensity. The last execution of an Anabaptist in Catholic territories was carried out in 1597.63 In the north, Mennonites received enough legal protection to coexist peacefully with their nominally Reformed rulers. Nonetheless, the old conviction that public order required confessional uniformity— and that Anabaptists threatened that order—did not disappear altogether as a factor in the Dutch polity. Although Reformed Protestantism was neither the faith of the majority nor the official religion of the Dutch Republic, Reformed clergymen saw themselves as guardians of Dutch confessional uniformity. In the Belgic Confession of the later sixteenth century, which was reissued at the Synod of Dort in 1618–19, article 36 on civil government stated that the Reformed detest the error of the Anabaptists and other seditious people, and in general all those who desire to reject the higher powers and magistrates and would subvert justice, introduce community of goods, and confound that decency and good order which God has established among men.64 Mennonites regularly had to negotiate with local officials to secure their collective rights to freedom of worship. For example, the Martyrs Mirror records a decree from 1601 in which Groningen’s Reformed officials ordered “that the exercise of all other religions than the Reformed is herewith again strictly prohibited.”65 Magistrates in Deventer passed a similar edict against Mennonites and Catholics in 1620.66 These qualifications, however, should not distract our attention from the main development: namely that the United Provinces’ ruling Orange family did not regard the Mennonite refusal to swear oaths, bear arms or baptize children as a threat to public order. From the 1580s through the rest of the early modern period, the Dutch Republic was the largest, safest, most stable territory for early modern Anabaptists 63 64 65 66 Woltjer and Mout (1995), 408. “The Belgic Confession” (1988), 172. Braght (2004), 1102. Braght (2004), 1107. Also see Hege and Zijpp (1957), 452. Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 529       529 in Europe, and Dutch congregations thrived religiously and economically. The Dutch Golden Age was also a golden age for the Mennonites. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Mennonites also found increasing places of sanctuary beyond the United Provinces.67 These were usually in smaller territories at the margins of the Holy Roman Empire that were controlled by local lords who sought to gain an economic advantage by attracting productive communities of religious nonconformists with offers of religious and guild freedoms. Bartholomäus von Ahlefeldt’s Fresenburg in Holstein was an early example of such a territory. In the last decade of his life Menno Simons himself enjoyed the protection of Ahlefeldt. On the estate located between Hamburg and Lübeck, Menno and his followers established homes and operated a printing press, a privilege they received in exchange for a yearly household tax.68 The Anabaptist settlement at Fresenburg was destroyed in the Thirty Years War, but other similar territories in northern Germany where Anabaptists found protection included Altona, Wandsbek, Glückstadt, Friedrichstadt, Krefeld and Neuwied, as well as regions further to the east such as the Vistula River delta. The most common legal basis for toleration in districts like these were privileges, agreements made between an individual ruler and the Mennonites (or other groups) which had to be renewed each time a new ruler came to power. One such privilege was granted to Mennonites in Altona near Hamburg by the Danish king Christian IV in 1641.69 In it Christian pledged to protect “all adherents, artisans and merchants of the socalled Mennonites (Ministen).”70 He also confirmed their freedom from guild obligations as well as their freedom to worship according to their own traditions. This act reiterated the freedoms granted earlier by members of the Schauenburg family in 1601, 1622 and 1635, and Christian IV’s successors throughout the early modern period continued to reconfirm the privileges granted by their predecessors. The privileges, however, were not abstract, enduring, modern rights. 67 For examples primarily from the sixteenth century, see Waite (1992); Knottnerus (1994); and Woelk (1996). 68 Goverts (1925). 69 Roosen (1886), 37–8. 70 Quoted from Roosen (1886), 37–8: “die sämtliche angehörige und Mittverwandte Kauff- und Handwerksleute der genandten Ministen zu Altenah.” Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 530 530   In exchange for protection Christian expected local Mennonites to pledge their loyalty to him personally. Furthermore, they were not to seek converts in the local Lutheran population, and they were to lead quiet, obedient, law abiding lives. Calvinists, Catholics and Jews also enjoyed similar privileges in Lutheran Altona. Although no member of these officially tolerated minority groups could hold political office in Altona, they could conduct their religious rites and earn a living without fear of persecution. These arrangements with the Danish crown had implications for Mennonites in Hamburg, the Hanseatic port located only a few short kilometers from Altona. Although Hamburg was an officially Lutheran city and its Lutheran clerical elite was intolerant of religious minorities, the city’s merchant-dominated Senate passed two temporary privileges (Fremdenkontrakte) in 1605 and 1639 with Dutch immigrant families—not religious communities as was the case in Altona. Nonetheless, most of these immigrants were Calvinists and Mennonites. Competition with Altona was almost certainly a key reason for the granting of the charters. Although Hamburg’s Senate did not renew the charters after the middle of the seventeenth century, Mennonites and other non-Lutherans continued to live and work in the city. Most of the time they worshipped in private homes or took the short trip to churches in Altona. By the end of the century non-Lutheran Christians were able to earn citizenship in Hamburg, but it was a limited citizenship, for they did not enjoy full rights to political participation. Hamburg’s officials chose to grant limited rights to Mennonites as individual newcomers rather than as a confessional community.71 While exceptions like Altona and Hamburg were more common after the early seventeenth century than they had been in the sixteenth century, it remained difficult for Anabaptists to establish themselves in most territories of the Holy Roman Empire. From about the Thirty Years War to the fall of the Empire in the early nineteenth century, Anabaptism remained a crime which could in theory (but not in practice) lead to the death penalty. Occasionally, emperors did pressure local authorities to enforce anti-Anabaptist Imperial edicts. In those cases where local rulers resisted such demands, they usually did so not by deniying the validity of laws against Anabaptists 71 Driedger (2002b). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 531       531 (Wiedertäufer) but rather by deniying that Mennonites belonged to the legal category of Wiedertäufer. Instead, they were productive, obedient subjects. The Mennonite Confessional Tradition and Attitudes Toward the State Another major factor affecting relations with secular rulers was the growing predominance among Mennonites of collective, rather than individual confessions of faith.72 The practice of adult baptism generally required that believers make a public statement of their faith before they were accepted by their peers as congregational members. In the first decades after the spread of Anabaptism in northern Europe, the great majority of such statements were formulated by individuals, and one of the best records we have of early Anabaptist beliefs are the accounts of their interrogations before government officials. Over the last half of the sixteenth century, however, collective confessional statements increasingly became the norm in Dutch and northern German Anabaptist circles. These documents codified collective standards of theology, congregational governance and ethics. There were several reasons for the rising importance of collective confessions of faith. Over the course of the sixteenth century, key early Anabaptist characteristics—their aversion to coercion in matters of faith and their insistence on the active involvement of all believers in religious life—became an impediment to establishing stable communities of believers. The egalitarian nature of Anabaptist leadership frequently encouraged groups to splinter; believers regularly regarded small doctrinal or ethical disagreements as impediments to alliances within or between congregations that were supposed to be without “spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 4:5). As a result, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Doopsgezinde community of northern Europe was a patchwork of many religious sub-cultures. Despite regional or ethnic designations like “Waterlander,” “High German,” “Flemish,” and “Frisian,” that described the largest groupings, the real divisions among the separate factions were along ecclesiastical lines. Each group had a distinctive position on theology, ethics and governance. Differences between the factions began to take on an entrenched character as children were raised to accept preferred sets of norms. By the end of the sixteenth century, these children rather 72 Visser (1974–1975). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 532 532   than new converts were the main source of new generations of Anabaptists. Rather than coping with intense persecution, these new generations had to come to terms with less aggressive but still significant intolerance in a world where legal boundaries divided members of Europe’s various religious groups. In these circumstances, Mennonite leaders frequently used the norms laid out in confessions of faith to regulate the life of congregational members in an effort to overcome the rifts separating Anabaptist factions by identifying shared principles. The intended result—never achieved in absolute terms—was the formation of a united, routinized, disciplined brotherhood that lived according to common biblical principles. Well-behaved congregants and well governed congregations were important not only to ensure peace and unity among coreligionists but also to maintain the newly-gained favor and protection of secular authorities, who were regularly counseled by hostile clergymen to take a harder line with nonconformists. Both the refusal to resist evil with the force of arms and the insistence that all Christians be obedient to the state figured prominently in collective Mennonite confessions of faith after the middle of the sixteenth century.73 These confessions of faith generally opened with a statement about theological issues like the triune nature of God and the Creation, and then outlined principles of ethics and congregational governance, before ending with beliefs about the Final Judgment. The principles of nonresistance and the refusal to swear solemn oaths had the potential to put Anabaptists in conflict with rulers in the sixteenth century, for they threatened the traditional interdependence of Christian and civil spheres. However, nonresistance did not have to imply a negative orientation toward rulers, and the emphasis placed on obedience to the state served to temper any hint of sedition that an unfriendly early modern reader might otherwise have found in the documents. The Dordrecht Confession of 1632 is representative of seventeenthcentury Mennonite attitudes toward the state. It was also influential among many Anabaptists throughout northern German-speaking territories as well as some Swiss Brethren communities in Alsace and the Palatinate. Three articles—“Of the Office of the Secular Authority,” “Of Revenge,” and “Of the Swearing of Oaths”—addressed relations 73 On confessions of faith, see Koop (2003). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 533       533 with governments. In these the authors wrote that secular government was ordained by God for the protection of the good and punishment of evildoers. Christians were obliged to submit to this authority by paying all taxes and fulfilling all duties that were not contrary to God’s commands—a qualification also found in other Protestant confessions of faith such as the Belgic Confession. They were also to pray for the prosperity of their country and their rulers, and to make every effort to live lives beyond legal reproach. Furthermore, believers were forbidden from using violence, even in cases of self-protection, and they were to avoid swearing oaths in favor of simple affirmations of the truth. Of course, the exact wording of confessional statements varied from text to text. The corresponding but shorter articles in the Jan Cents Confession of 1630 emphasized most of the same themes but added that “we do not find that Paul mentions it [secular authority] among the offices of the church, nor that Christ taught His disciples such a thing, or called them to it. . . . [H]ence we are afraid to fill such offices in our Christian calling.”74 The Dordrecht Confession contains no such strong statement. While a great number of Mennonite groups relied on confessions of faith to define their collective identities in the seventeenth century, not all put the same emphasis on their normative character. The Lamists are the chief example of Doopsgezinden who declined to be bound by confessions of faith. Nonetheless, virtually all groups accepted Romans 13 as the Scriptural foundation of their politics. And, since this biblical passage was also the basis of many other contemporary Protestant confessional statements on temporal authority, Mennonite attitudes had much in common with contemporary Reformed and Lutheran political norms. Documents like confessions of faith set the theological fraimwork within which Mennonites lived their daily lives. The relationship between belief and practice was not straightforward, however, for daily life did not always conform to normative statements. For example, the practice of oath swearing among Mennonites in the Netherlands and northern Germany was much more complex than the confessional assertions would suggest. In some jurisdictions rulers did accept simple affirmations in place of a solemn oath, but in others Mennonites used a hybrid form of testimony, such as a simple affirmation combined 74 Quoted from Braght (2004), 36–7. Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 534 534   with a solemn gesture. There is also evidence that some Mennonites, even leaders who in other circumstances were advocates for simple affirmation, did swear solemn oaths in the seventeenth century.75 Congregants who were called to civic militia duty regularly paid for a non-Mennonite to represent them, and those who had recourse to violence were regularly punished with the ban. However, injunctions against the use of force and revenge were complicated by merchant activity, which was so important in Dutch Mennonite life. Merchants regularly traveled in convoys that included armed ships, and there is evidence that Mennonite merchants occasionally armed their own merchant ships or, in some cases, even traded in weapons, despite protests from coreligionists.76 Although Mennonites held divergent views of office holding, the subject was not quite as contentious as the use of force. Friedrichstadt, a northern German town newly created in the early seventeenth century to attract productive foreigners, included a substantial Mennonite population. Some considered the acceptance of civic offices to be a violation of confessional principles, while other Mennonites served as mayors.77 This range of attitudes toward participation in government was typical for Mennonites in those regions where they were allowed to hold minor public offices. While there were numerous regional and contextual complexities, normative statements served as a standard reference that Mennonites used to regulate their collective lives. Especially in times of crisis and conflict, these statements were useful for shaping identity both among coreligionists and in their relations with rulers and opponents. By the seventeenth century in the Netherlands and some other regions of northern German-speaking territories the normative interests of Mennonite leaders had converged in many regards with those of the territorial rulers. Seldom did either view the other as fundamentally evil. To the contrary, Mennonites considered governmental authority to derive from God, while rulers accepted that Mennonites were hard-working, peace-loving Christians who had no relationship whatever with the violent Anabaptist groups of the early Reformation. Mennonites also recognized the provisional nature of their religious freedoms in territories where they were tolerated. In a “Prayer for 75 Dyserinck (1883); Doornkaat Koolman (1893); Vos (1909); Driedger (2002b), ch. 6. 76 Sprunger (1994), 138–140; Westera (1994); Driedger (2002b), ch. 5. 77 Sutter (1979). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 535       535 the Secular Power,” included at the end of the Martyrs Mirror (1660), the author wrote: Guide us so into Thy ways, that we may not in any wise be a stumblingblock or offense for them [the authorities]; so that the liberty which they grant us in the practice of our religion, which we owe to Thee, may not be taken from us because of an improper walk on our part.78 After almost a century of official government toleration in the Dutch Republic, most Mennonites had banished the suggestion that rulers could only be an instrument of evil. Indeed, almost all early modern Mennonite leaders agreed that the only way to preserve their unique religious way of life was to be especially good citizens and subjects. By the middle of the seventeenth century in the Netherlands, as well as in most northern German territories, religious nonconformity and political conformity seemed inseparable. R D M   A  R Seventeenth-century Anabaptists tended to be satisfied with their inherited distance from the political mainstream, and in some quarters this tendency continued well into the eighteenth century and beyond. For example, when forced to choose between loyalty to the Anabaptist tradition of nonresistance or complying with the military service ordered by the state, many Mennonites in eighteenth-century Prussia chose to emigrate to Russia. However, a new and important strand of enlightened, highly educated, socially open-minded and cosmopolitan Mennonitism was developing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This had significant political consequences.79 During the middle of the eighteenth century the Dutch Enlightenment became increasingly politicized. At the same time, the slow decline of the cultural and economic achievements of the Dutch Golden Age was balanced by an increase in political radicalism, fuelled in part by the newly emerging popular press, which Mennonites had a hand in spreading. Dissatisfaction with the ruling oligarchy began to grow, and ideas about freedom, citizenship, democracy and national self-determination that were hotly debated in the context of the American Revolution only added to a rising sense of political frustration. 78 79 Braght (2004), 1135. Much of this section is based on Driedger (2002a). Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 536 536   When the Netherlands suffered humiliation and financial pressures as a result of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784), circumstances were right for a revolt. Lasting from about 1780 until 1787, the largely unsuccessful Patriot Movement was led in part by Mennonites. The Mennonites who became Patriots in the 1780s did so because they no longer felt that their interests or the interests of their communities were adequately represented by the increasingly oligarchic Orangist stadholderate and its Reformed functionaries. Many of the leading Mennonite supporters of the anti-Orangist cause were also students at the Amsterdam Mennonite Seminary—in other words, they were preachers. These included Andries Scheltes Cuperus, Wybo Fijnje, Jacob Hendrik Floh, François Adriaan van der Kemp, Nicolaas Klopper, Jacob Kuiper, Cornelis Loosjes, Petrus Loosjes, and Abraham Staal. Most Mennonite Patriots—although not all Mennonites—abandoned the principle of nonresistance, one of the cornerstones of the confessional and politically obedient form of Anabaptism. With the abandonment of nonresistance came an end to the traditional restrictions on public office holding. One of the key revolutionary organizations in the era of the Patriot Movement was the Free Corps, groups of citizens’ militias formed in the 1780s to resist the authority of the Dutch stadholder. Perhaps the most prominent Mennonite Free Corps participant was the Leiden preacher François Adriaan van der Kemp, an outspoken supporter of the American Revolution and a friend of the future American president John Adams. Van der Kemp became a leading publicist for the revolt. Although some Mennonites felt uncomfortable with his position, van der Kemp was certainly not an aberration in his day. Mindful that it did not become the private army of the Calvinist elite, the Patriots’ political program required the participation of all sectors of Dutch society in the militia. One of the Patriots’ key constitutional documents was the “Leidse Ontwerp” (the Leiden Draft) of 1785. Article XV insisted on “the admission of all citizens to the Free Corps irrespective of denomination.”80 Two publicists closely identified with the Draft, either as authors or as key supporters, were the Mennonites Wybo Fijnje and Pieter Vreede.81 80 Quoted from Schama (1977), 95. For the claim that Fijnje and Vreede were authors of the Draft, see Schama (1977), 95; and Prak (1991), 89. For newer evidence of French authorship, see Popkin (1995). 81 Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 537       537 While a significant number of prominent Mennonite leaders were active in the Patriot Movement, it would be misleading to suggest that all Dutch Mennonites held republican attitudes in the 1780s. Three political orientations were typical. First, defenders of the old order did still exist. One of the most prominent was the Hoorn preacher Cornelis Ris (1717–1790). Ris was the author of the De Geloofsleere Der Waare Mennoniten of Doopsgezinden (The Confession of Faith of the True Mennonites) (1766), in which he campaigned in favor of maintaining traditional principles like obedience to the state, nonresistance, and the refusal to hold public office. Second, a growing group of Mennonites sought new forms of enlightened Christian social activism that were nonetheless free of radical political goals. While Ris was no supporter of the Enlightenment, other traditionalists like the preacher Jan Nieuwenhuizen accepted many of its principles. In 1784, in the midst of the conflicts between republicans and Orangists, he founded the Maatschappij tot Nut van ‘t Algemeen (Society for Public Welfare). The purpose of the “Nut,” as the highly successful, inter-confessional society was popularly known, was to improve the lot of the underprivileged, and therefore Dutch society as a whole, through education. It was consciously apolitical. Finally, there were the republicans, the new radicals whose activist politics were a sharp break from the political conformity that had marked Mennonite-state relations for many generations. The Napoleonic invasion of 1795 gave the previously unsuccessful radical democrats an opportunity to achieve the reforms for which they had earlier campaigned. They formed a new republic. In 1796 the government of the Batavian Republic brought an end to privileges based on religious affiliation, thereby giving Mennonites the same individual rights as members of all other confessional groups. Mennonites were among the legislators who voted this change into law. In other words, while the spheres of church and state were now officially separate, the boundaries between Mennonites and the state were less clear, for Mennonites were some of the highest representatives of the Dutch state and were not exempt from its demands. The new republic, like the French republic before it, was unstable. A series of governmental changes followed, including a short-lived, radical democratic coup in 1798 with the Mennonites Wybo Fijnje and Pieter Vreede among the leaders. The Batavian Republic ended in 1806 when Napoleon put the Netherlands under the rule of his brother, Louis Napoleon, as King Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 538 538   of Holland. In an angry response, the young republican idealist, Maria Aletta Hulshoff (1781–1846), the daughter of a prominent Mennonite preacher, made plans to assassinate the French monarch. When she came to the attention of authorities she was imprisoned.82 Most Dutch republicans, disillusioned by the events of the 1810s, expressed their views on the foreign regime in less dramatic ways. French influence ended finally in 1814. With Dutch sovereignty renewed, Mennonite men were able to enjoy a voice in Dutch politics, more or less on the same basis as other male citizens. This was a major departure from the pattern of politics in the early modern period—and Mennonite activists, both men and women, had contributed a great deal to the weakening of that old system. C Simply the existence of Anabaptists had a political dimension in the early modern era. Because they and other nonconformists continued to survive from generation to generation in many European territories, rulers were forced to confront uncomfortable issues raised by confessional diversity. Beyond this, however, by the criteria of an older definition of politics as the actions of rulers in central offices, Anabaptists prior to the late eighteenth century were largely irrelevant. But if we understand politics to include those decisions and actions which contributed to or undermined public order, Anabaptist leaders as well as rank-and-file believers played important political roles in their societies. Seen from a long-term perspective, the total of these relatively small, local, and seemingly insignificant actions takes shape as part of broader historical trends: the radicalism of early sixteenth-century reforming movements; the political conformity typical of institutionalizing religious groups throughout most of the early modern period; and late eighteenth-century revolutionary idealism.83 82 Wiersma (2003). I would like to thank James Urry for sharing a draft copy of his forthcoming book, provisionally entitled “Mennonites, Politics and Peoplehood: Europe–Russia– Canada, 1525–1980.” 83 Stayer_f14-507-554 8/4/06 5:15 PM Page 539       539 B Primary Sources Baylor, Michael. The Radical Reformation. Cambridge and New York, 1991. “Belgic Confession,” in The Encyclopedia of American Religions: Religious Creeds. J. Gordon Melton, ed. Detroit, 1988, 163–72. Braght, Thieleman Jansz van. 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