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The Swiss Brethren: An Exercise in Historical Definition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

James M. Stayer
Affiliation:
professor in the Department of History, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.

Extract

The Swiss Brethren originated “in, with and under” the Reformation. They lacked the traditional mystical thought patterns which were so influential for Thomas Müntzer, Hans Hut and Hans Denck and their followers in South and Central Germany. Although they possessed a vivid apocalyptic sense, which they shared with many of the Reformers, they did not permit their eschatological expectancy to crystallize into the concrete and violent prophecies of a Hans Hut or a Melchior Hoffman. Thus they avoided the chiliasm which at first stimulated, but eventually blighted, German and Dutch Anabaptism. They did not move from sectarian congregations to communalism like the Hutterites, with the result that in the later sixteenth century they were preyed upon and denounced by Hutterite missionaries anxious to lead their members to the promised land. They were willing to regard the Christological speculations of the Melchiorites as adiaphora, but Menno Simons remained too much a Melchiorite to accept the hand of brotherhood which they extended from Strassburg. Despite their impulses toward “Anabaptist ecumenicism,” followers of that other would-be Anabaptist ecumenicist, Pilgram Marpeck, denounced them in the Kunstbuch as a “harmful and corrupting sect” which sought Christ “outside the human heart … in the Scriptures or other dead creatures.” The relations of the Swiss Brethren to the German and Swiss Reformations, their relations to other Anabaptist groups and the phases of their development remain historical problems, in some cases controverted, in others insufficiently studied.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1978

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References

1. This essay is an attempt to place the sound and valuable work of Harold S. Bender, Fritz Blanke, Heinold Fast and John Yoder, who hold the picture of the Swiss Brethren that is now traditional, within the context of the polygenetic approach suggested by Deppermann, Klaus, Packull, Werner O. and me in “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” Mennonite Quarterly Review (hereafter MQR) 49 (1975):83121.Google Scholar Such an undertaking involves an effort to define, and limit, the significance of the revisionist assessments by J. F. G. Goeters, Martin Haas and myself, and to seek a concord between this revisionist literature and the writings of the “Bender School.” The result is a synopsis based on works of source research by myself and others; hence the annotation will refer primarily to the historical literature.

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15. Z3:63–64, 404; von Muralt, Loenhard and Schmid, Walter, eds., Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz 1:Zürich (Zurich, 1952)Google Scholar (hereafter TA Zürich), p. 121.

16. “Ob man gemach faren/und des ergernüssen der schwachen verschonen soll….” (Basel, 1524), in Hertzsch, Erich, ed., Karlstadts Schriften aus den Jahren 1523–1525 (Halle/ Salle, 1956) 1:7497, esp. 80–82, 85, 96.Google Scholar

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18. This is certainly not the way he would have put it, but it is the consequence of his repeated declarations that he committed himself to the Gospel as early as 1515 or 1516, before he had ever heard of Luther. It is the version of the “Zurich tradition” of Zwingli's independent development which I shall uphold in my intellectual and political biography of Zwingli (now in preparation). Cf. the discussion of Zwingli's statements about his beginnings as a Reformer in Gäbler, Ulrich, Huldrych Zwingli im 20. Jahrhundert. Forschungsbericht und annotierte Bibliographie 1897–1972 (Zurich, 1975), pp. 4144;Google ScholarPotter, George R., Zwingli (Cambridge, 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Egli, , Actensammlung, p. 168.Google Scholar This reintroduces the hoary question about a “turning point” within the Zwinglian Reformation. Certainly, if Zwingli began as an Erasmian, he turned away from Erasmus in important respects. Moreover, there was an important turn from a New Testament to an Old Testament stress in his preaching in 1525 (Pollet, J. V., Huldrych Zwingli et la Réforme en Suisse, Paris, 1963, pp. 3031,Google Scholar under the heading: “Le point tournant de la carrière de Zwingli: il se tourne vers l'Ancien Testament—1525.”) This Old Testament emphasis and his developing theology of covenant were certainly related to the split with the Swiss Brethren (cf. Cottrell, Jack Warren, “Covenant and baptism in the Theology of Huldreich Zwingli,” Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1971).Google Scholar On the other hand Robert Walton is certainly correct in stressing that Zwingli's religious communalism, which separated him from the Swiss Brethren, was a basic element of his program of Reformation and did not involve an alteration or surrender of principle (“Was There a Turning Point in the Zwinglian Reformation?” MQR 42 (1968):4556).Google Scholar No more than any major Reformer was Zwingli monolithic and static in his teaching and program of action. However, “turning point” has come to mean not that Zwingli changed his mind about tithes or baptism or the authority of the Old Testament, but that he betrayed his basic Reformation principles. Certainly this was what it meant to Bender, when he asked: “May it not be said that the decision of Luther and Zwingli to surrender their original vision was the tragic turning point of the Reformation?” (“Anabaptist Vision,” p. 41). These connotations were continued in Yoder's, John H., “The Turning Point of the Zwinglian ReformationMQR 32 (1958):128140, esp. 140,Google Scholar and they are not absent from Fast's, Heinold “‘Die Wahreit wird euch freimachen’. Die Anfänge der Täuferbewegung in ZürichMennonitische Geschichtsblätter (hereafter MGBL) 32 (1975): 18:Google Scholar “Zwingli … gewann … die Obrigkeit für die Durchführung seiner Reformation. Die Frage aber ist, ob es wirklich noch seine Reformation war.” No doubt the exposure of the wicked and the weak is part of the historian's task, but Zwingli's moral failings do not provide the key to the split between the Reformed and the Swiss Brethren, and the “turning point of the Zwinglian Reformation” should be consigned together with Schwärmer to the museum of confessional polemic.

20. TA Zürich, pp.3–4.

21. Morf, Hans, “Obrigkeit und Kirche in Zürich bis zu Beginn der ReformationZwa 13 (1970): 164205;Google ScholarStayer, , “Anfänge,” pp. 3336;Google ScholarGoeters, , “Vorgeschichte,” pp. 264270.Google Scholar For a later instance of the interaction of rural-urban struggle with the course of the Zurich Reformation, cf. Maeder, Kurt, “Die Unruhe der Zürcher Landschaft nach Kappel (1531/32), oder: Aspekte einer Herrschaftskrise,” Zwa 14 (1974/1975):109144.Google Scholar

22. Yoder, “Turning Point;” Walton, “Turning Point?”. Cf. the discussion of the controversy in “Monogenesis,” pp. 93–96.

23. Schmid, Walter, “Der Author der sogenannten Protestation and Schutzschrift von 1524/25Zwa 9 (1950):139149;Google ScholarRupp, E. Gordon, “Andrew Karlstadt and Reformation Puritanism,” Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1959):321,Google Scholar n. 3. Schmid, p. 146, speculated: “Der fortgeschrittene Lautstand von Manz lässt sich wohl nur so erklären, dass er sich von den Luthertexten in ganz ungewöhnlicher Weise beeinflussen liess oder seine Sprache sogar bewusst an ihnen schulte.” The more likely explanation is that Mantz patterned himself upon Carlstadt.

24. TA Zürich, pp. 10–11.

25. Ibid., p. 21.

26. Ibid., pp. 13–21. Cf. Bender, Harold S., Conrad Grebel c. 1498–1526: The Founder of the Swiss Brethren (Goshen, Ind., 1950), pp. 171183;Google ScholarLoewen, Harry, Luther and the Radicals (Waterloo, Ont., 1974), pp. 7479.Google Scholar Loewen notes that Bender exaggerates Grebel's critical attitude towards Müntzer. This is true enough, but the primary weakness of Bender's treatment of the Grebel letter is not so much an exaggeration of its critical distance from Müntzer, as a failure to realize that Müntzer was criticized for being a “moderate,” not an “extremist.” Cf. Zuck, Lowell, “Anabaptism: Abortive Counter-Revolt within the Reformation,” Church History 26 (1957):223, n. 25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Stayer, James M., Anabaptists and the Sword (Lawrence, Kansas, 1972), pp. 102105.Google Scholar

28. Z, 3:404; Z, 4:207.

29. Weber, Max, “‘Kirchen’ und ‘Sekten’ in Nordamerika,” Christliche Welt 20 (1906):578:Google Scholar“Eine ‘Sekte’—nach der hier ad hoc geschaffenen Terminologie … ist… eine freie Gemeinschaft lediglich religiös qualfizierter Individuen, in welche der Einzelne kraft beiderseits freier Entschliessung aufgenommen wird.”; Troeltsch, Ernst, Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen, 1912).Google Scholar Franklin H. Littell signifies the continuing usage of the Troeltschian typology (although he expresses a certain reserve about it in his foreword) in re–titling the third edition of his Anabaptist View of the Church as The Origins of Sectarian Protestantism (New York and London, 1964).Google Scholar

Blanke, , Brothers, p. 13,Google Scholar sees a “new program” emerging in Grebel's letter to Müntzer: “A short time before, he has still agitated for a new form of state church. Now we read: ‘The Christian church is the congregation of the few who believe and live right.’ So then the Christians remain a minority on earth.” This is a rather excessive conclusion from Grebel's objection to the “sparing of the weak”: “Ess ist fil weger, dass wenig recht bericht werdind durch dass wort Gottes, recht gloubind und wandlind in tugenden und brüchen, denn dass fil uss vermischter ler falsch hinderlistig gloubind.” (TA Zürich, p. 16). The total historical context of the first adult baptisms suggests, rather, the conclusions of Martin Haas. “Der Weg der Täufer in die Absonderung. Zur Interdependenz von Theologie und sozialem Verhalten,” in Goertz, , Umstrittenes Täufertum, pp. 63, 65:Google Scholar “Grebel und Hubmaier scheinen an eine massgebende täuferische Reformation gedacht zu haben, die Zwinglis Richtung den Rang ablaufen konnte.” and “Religionssoziologisch gesprochen handelte es sich hier nicht um Absonderung und schon gar nicht um eine Sekte.” Haas writes with particular authority, since his essay is based on a major forthcoming study of Swiss Anabaptism and since he has edited two of the four volumes of Swiss Täuferakten (Vol.4 has already appeared; vol. 3 is still in preparation).

30. TA Zürich, pp. 35–36; cf. Meihuizen, H. W., “De bronnen voor een geschiedenis van de eerste doperse doopstoediening,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen NS 1 (1975):5461.Google Scholar

31. Stayer, , “Anfänge,” pp. 3946;Google ScholarStayer, , “Reublin and Brötli,” pp. 8999;Google ScholarHaas, , “Weg,” pp. 5765.Google Scholar

32. Haas, , “Weg,” pp. 6364.Google ScholarYoder, John H., “Der Kristallisationspunkt des Täufertums,” MGBl 29 (1972):39,Google Scholar contended that in Waldshut “Das Modell einer volkskirchlichen Reformationsbewegung, welche sich bruchlos bis hin zum Anabaptismus entwickeln würde, ohne sich in ‘Kirche’ und ‘Sekte’ gespalten zu haben, stand vor Augen.” The argument that someone contemplated the possibility of a “Waldshut in grossem Massstabe” (Yoder, p. 41) applies better to Grebel in 1525 than to Michael Sattler in Strassburg in 1526. Cf. the discussion in Deppermann, Klaus, “Die Strassburger Reformatoren und die Krise des oberdeutschen Täufertums im Jahre 1527,” MGBl 30 (1973):2441;Google ScholarYoder, John H. and Deppermann, Klaus, “Ein Briefwechsel über die Bedeutung des Schleitheimer Bekenntnisses,” MGBI 30 (1973):4252.Google Scholar

33. Stayer, , Anabaptists, pp. 107108.Google Scholar

34. Walder, Ernst, “Der politische Gehalt der Zwölf Artikel der deutschen Bauernschaft von 1525,” Schweizer Beiträge zur Allgemeinen Geschichte 12 (1954): 522.Google Scholar

35. TA Zürich, pp. 156–157, contains charges against Reublin.

36. Haas, , “Weg,” pp. 68, 72.Google Scholar

37. TA Zürich, pp. 20, 31.

38. Fast, Heinold, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 2: Ostschweiz (Zurich, 1973)Google Scholar (hereafter TA Ostschweiz), pp. 251–253, 262–265; TA Zürich, pp. 80–81. Cf. Heinold Fast, “Reformation durch Provokation: Predigtstörungen in den ersten Jahren der Reformation in der Schweiz,” in Goertz, , Umstrittenes Täufertum, pp. 79110,Google Scholar for the relation of these sermon disturbances to conceptions of lay initiative among the Swiss Brethren.

39. TA Zürich, pp. 127–128, 216; Haas, , “Weg,” pp. 6970.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., pp. 73–75, Cf. Yoder, John H., The Legacy of Michael Sattler (Scottdale, Pa., 1973), p. 16, n. 2.Google Scholar

41. Stayer, , Anabaptists, pp. 95113;Google ScholarHaas, , “Weg,” pp.7172.Google Scholar

42. Fast, Heinold, “Die Sonderstellung der Täufer in St. Gallen und AppenzellZwa 11 (1960):223240.Google Scholar Naturally I do not agree with Fast's conclusion that the Marpeck circle belongs to the Swiss Brethren.

43. TA Ostschweiz, pp. 262, 703.

44. Müller, Lydia, ed., Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Täufgesinnter (hereafter, TA Glaubenszeugnisse) (Leipzig, 1938) 1:123.Google Scholar

45. TA Zürich, p. 66. The outside testimonies to this particular lay piety constitute about four-fifths of the content of Bender's description of discipleship in his “Anabaptist Vision,” pp. 43–47.

46. Haas, , “Weg,” p. 60.Google Scholar

47. Müntzer, Schriften, p. 335:Google Scholar “er will em newer Christus sein, welcher mit seinem blůt für die christenheyt vill gθs erworben hatt und dennoch umb einer feynen sach willen, daz die pfaffen weyber nemmen.”

48. Clasen, Claus-Peter, Anabaptism. A Social History, 1525–1618. Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany (Ithaca and London, 1972), pp. 374375;Google ScholarTA Zürich, pp. 109–111, 191–193, 226: The sentence against Mantz states that he “von gmeyner christenlicher versamblung … gesündert” and undertook to create “ein besundere sect, rott, versamblung und zesamenkomung.”

49. TA Zürich, pp. 180–181.

50. It is hard to claim that Hans Rüeger was a nonresistant martyr, and the matter is open to question in the case of Hans, Krüsi. Stayer, “Anfánge,” pp. 4546;Google ScholarStayer, , “Reublin and Bröth,” p. 100101.Google Scholar

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52. Ibid., pp. 15–29.

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54. The conception of a Swiss monogenesis of Anabaptism led to a stress upon the influence of George Blaurock's mission in the Tyrol as the beginning of Austrian Anabaptism. More recent research has regarded Hut and his disciples as the initiators of Austrian and Tyrolean Anabaptism. Cf. Packull, Werner O., Mysticism and the Early South German–Austrian Anabaptist Movement 1525–1531, (Scottdale, Pa., 1977).Google Scholar The relation between these two streams of influence remains to be sorted out.

55. Gottfried Seebass, “Müntzers Erbe. Werk, Leben und Theologie des Hans Hut (gest. 1527)” (Habilitationsschrift, Erlangen, 1972); Schmid, Hans-Dieter, “Das Hutsche Taufertum,” Historisches Jahrbuch 91 (1971):327344;Google ScholarPackull, , Mysticism, pp. 62117, 199214.Google Scholar

56. TA Ostschweiz, pp. 274, 403, 614–615.

57. Cf. the speculations of Oosterbaan, J. A., “De Broederlijke Vereniging, een voorlopig consolidatiepunt der broederschap,” in Broederlijke Vereniging. Doperse Stemmen (Amsterdam, 1974) l:2338, esp. 25–26.Google Scholar

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60. TA Ostschweiz, pp. 28, 34.

61. Meihuizen, H. W., “Who were the False Brethren mentioned in the Schleitheim Articles?,” MQR 41 (1967): 200222;Google Scholar Yoder, “Kristallizationspunkt;” Deppermann, “Strassburger Reformatoren.”

62. TA Ostschweiz, p. 31.

63. Ibid., p. 226.

64. Haas, , “Weg,” p. 67.Google Scholar

65. TA Ostschweiz, pp. 29–30. The explicit exclusion of “alle kindertouff, des baptst höchsten und ersten gruwel” in article 1 (p. 28), and the statement in article 3 (p. 29): “Wir mögen … nit uff einmal theilhaftig syn und trincken von des herrn kelch und der tufflen kelch,” suggest that the religious separatism of the Schleitheim Articles must have been partly directed against the practice by some Anabaptists of protective conformity to the official cults.

66. TA Glaubenszeugnisse, vol. 1, p. 39.Google Scholar

67. Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton, N.J., 1972), p. 486.Google Scholar

68. I am in basic disagreement with Heinold Fast's view that the Schleitheim Articles'“Scheidung zwischen Gemeinde und Welt … entsteht nicht durch eine Dämonisierung der Welt, sondern durch die konsequente Nachfolgebereitschaft der Glieder des Leibes Christi” (De linke Flügel der Reformation, Bremen, 1962, p. 59).Google Scholar Robert Friedmann illustrates the basic interrelatedness of conceptions of discipleship and of a doctrine of two worlds, in which “this world” inescapably is at the disposal of Satan, although, like all Satan's works, under the ultimate sovereignty of God. (“The Doctrine of the Two Worlds,” in Hershberger, Recovery, pp. 105118, esp. p. 110,Google Scholar where he structures a New Testament dualism between “the world—being ruled by ‘the prince of this world’;, i.e., Satan—and the other world, the kingdom. which is God's world.”) Older Mennonite scholars, like Horsch, Bender and Friedmann, have been better attuned to the separatist ethos of the Swiss Brethren than their successors.

69. The proceedings of these disputations are now published in a critical edition: Haas, Martin, ed., Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 4 (Zurich, 1974).Google Scholar

70. TA Ostschweiz, pp. 108–113, 141–165.

71. Meyer, Christian, “Zur Geschichte der Wiedertäufer in Oberschwaben,” Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuberg 1 (1874):227228.Google Scholar

72. Packull, , Mysticism, pp. 9299, 118129, 207209, 214217;Google ScholarStayer, , Anabaptists, pp. 159161.Google Scholar

73. Wappler, Paul, Die Täuferbewegung in Thüringen von 1526–1584 (Jena, 1913), pp. 257, 259, 289.Google Scholar

74. Westin, Gunnar and Bergsten, Torsten, eds., Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, vol. 9: Balthasar Hubmaier, Schriften (Gütersloh, 1962)Google Scholar (hereafter TA Hubmaier Schriften), pp. 486–487, 489: “Derhalb jch vast vbl zufriden bin mit Hanns Hutten vnd seinen Anhenngern, das sy haimlich vnd in den winckheln das volckh auffreden, verfieren, Conspiration vnd aufrur bewegen vnnder dem schein des Taufs vnnd nachtmals Cristi, als miess man mit dem Schwert daran vnd dergleichen.”

75. TA Hubmaier Schriften, pp. 432–457.

76. Freidmann, Robert, ed., Die Schriften der Huterischen Täufergemeinschaften (Vienna, 1965).Google Scholar See the most frequently cited account of the first adult baptisms in Zurich, in Zieglschmid, A. J. F., ed., Die älteste Chronik der Hutterischen Brüder (Ithaca, N.Y., 1943), p. 47;Google Scholar and the odd rehabilitation of Müntzer, Thomas in Beck, Joseph, ed., Die Geschichts-Bücher der Wiedertäufer in Oesterreich-Ungarn [Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, 43] (Vienna, 1883), p. 13.Google Scholar

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78. Deppermann, Klaus, “Melchior Hoffmans Weg von Luther zu den Täufern,” in Goertz, Umstrittenes Täuferium, pp. 173205.Google Scholar

79. Stayer, , Anabaptists, pp. 283305.Google Scholar

80. Hulshof, , Geschiedenis, pp. 218231.Google Scholar

81. Oyer, John S., Lutheran Reformers Against Anabaptists (The Hague, 1964), pp. 5255;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGeldbach, Erich, “Toward a more Ample Biography of the Hessian Anabaptist Leader Melchior Rinck,” MQR 48 (1974):371384.Google Scholar

82. Wappler, , Täuferbewegung, p. 252.Google Scholar

83. Of course, as Werner Packull points out, it was not direct knowledge of Swiss Anabaptism, but the report of “how some brothers in the Inntal [Tyroll] had been baptized and now lived Christian lives” that led to Hut's requesting baptism from Denck, (“Denck's Alleged Baptism by Hubmaier: Its Significance for the Origin of South German-Austrian Anabaptism,” MQR 47 (1973):322;Google ScholarMeyer, , “Oberschwaben,” pp. 224, 245.)Google Scholar

84. Schornbaum, Karl, ed., Quellen zur Geschrichte der Täufer, vol. 2: Bayern, 1: Markgraftum Brandenburg (Leipzig, 1934), p. 170;Google ScholarWappler, , Täuferbewegung, pp. 366, 372.Google Scholar

85. Meihuizen, “Bronnen.”

86. Stayer, , Anabaptists, pp. 325326.Google ScholarCramer, S. and Pijper, F., eds., Bibliotheca Reformatoria Neerlandica—Geschriften uit den tijd der Hervorming in de Nederlanden (The Hague, 19041910) 2:17, 5669; 5:585586.Google Scholar