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The birth and evolution of Swiss anabaptism (1520-1530)

2006; Volume: 80; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

0025-9373

Christopher A. Snyder,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

Historical accounts of have long been dominated by debates concerning its origins, including its theological foundations. Already in the sixteenth century it was thought that identifying origins also laid bare the theological nature of the movement. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that polemic as well as apologetic approaches have played a constant role in the discussion of beginnings. The field has continued to be plowed assiduously down to the present, with results seemingly as varied as the narrators and their ideological commitments. The literature is vast--by the reckoning of one historian, second in volume in Reformation studies only to the body of work generated by the Luther-renaissance. (1) We will not attempt a detailed description of this literature, nor rehearse the well-known historiographical shifts of the last century and a half. (2) The question of the nature of Swiss Anabaptism, however, and the proper description of its origin and evolution, has been made the focus of attention once again with the publication in 2003 of Andrea Strubind's detailed study. (3) Strubind has argued that Swiss origins must be read and described primarily as a theological narrative, and, further, that when read through the lens of historical theology, Swiss displayed a separatist, free church ecclesiology from the start, in unbroken continuity from the early Zurich radicals to the Schleitheim Articles. With this thesis Strubind wishes to revise the revisionists of the 1970s and 1980s, who argued that early Swiss Anabaptism, in particular, was ambivalent on questions of violence and political involvement, and became solidly sectarian and separatist only following the failure of the Peasants' War. (4) It was Strubind's study, especially her insistence that theological and ecclesiological evidence be taken seriously, that led to this present essay, in which we will reexamine the sources and the historical studies that have shaped the narratives of Swiss beginnings. By sorting through the accumulated evidence we hope to provide, in conclusion, a balanced account of this decade of beginnings in Switzerland. In this essay the term Anabaptist is used to denote those sixteenth-century adherents who insisted on carrying out a water baptism of adults as the only proper, biblical baptism. Defining Anabaptism in this way has the merit of freeing the historical narrative from both polemical and hagiographical definitions, grounding the examination and description of the movement in an ecclesial practice recognized as central by adherents and their opponents alike. Excluded are radical opponents of infant baptism who never took the further step of instituting adult baptism, such as Thomas Muntzer and Andreas Karlstadt. This definition also clarifies the distinction between Spiritualists and Anabaptists, along the same lines that the baptizers themselves used: those who decided that only a spiritual baptism was needed were not considered brethren by those who continued to practice baptism in water. Of course, this definition must include among the baptizers people who were no great credit to descendants, such as the Munsterites and the Batenburgers, but this is simply to recognize the historical fact that not all Anabaptists were heroines, martyrs and saints. There is now no serious questioning of the fact that the earliest documented baptism of adults in the sixteenth century took place in Zurich, on or about the evening of January 21, 1525. (5) Present and participating were Conrad Grebel and Felix Mantz, former friends and students of Huldrych Zwingli, and George Blaurock, a lapsed priest from Chur. There were other persons present, but they remain unnamed in the sources. The Hutterite Chronicle describes the event: After the prayer, Georg Blaurock stood up and asked Conrad Grebel in the name of God to baptize him with true Christian baptism on his faith and recognition of the truth. …