Anabaptists

During the 16th century, when Catholics and Protestants were killing and persecuting each other across Europe in an epic contest for doctrinal supremacy, there was one thing they could agree on—that Anabaptists were heretics who should be put to death.

The word “anabaptist” means “re-baptizer” or “one who baptizes over again.” The Anabaptists emerged as an offshoot of the Protestant reformation and one of their fundamental beliefs was that only adults should be baptized—after making a confession of faith. They did not believe infant baptism to be valid, because an infant isn’t capable of making a decision of faith. Because Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists all practiced infant baptism, they derisively called those who chose to be baptized again as adults “re-baptizers”/anabaptists. The Anabaptists rejected the label but, nevertheless (as is so often the case in history) the derogatory term stuck and in time those to whom it was applied embraced it.

So why did the religious establishment care if these people didn’t believe in infant baptism? Well, aside from the fact that any challenges to established orthodoxy were deemed dangerous, the Anabaptist claim that infant baptism was invalid was particularly inflammatory because it suggested that nearly all Christians (Protestant and Catholic alike) hadn’t been properly baptized at all, and therefore hadn’t acquired the eternal benefits of baptism. Perhaps more importantly, the belief was seen as a challenge to the authority of the state, which at the time was inextricably intertwined with the religion of the state.

So, Anabaptists across Europe were persecuted with zeal. In most of Protestant Europe the penalty for practicing and advocating “re-baptism” was death by drowning or beheading. In Catholic Europe, the penalty was burning at the stake. Many thousands of Anabaptists (who, ironically perhaps, were pacifists who believed the Sermon on the Mount was to be taken literally) met these gruesome deaths. During the 16th century there were more Anabaptists killed by fellow Christians than there were Christians martyred by Rome during the first three centuries of the faith.

Hans Bret was a baker in Antwerp, in his young 20’s when he converted to Anabaptism and was baptized. Learning of his crime, authorities arrested him, charged him with having been “re-baptized” and sentenced him to death. After torturing Hans in an unsuccessful attempt to force him to recant his faith, he was burned at the stake. Before his execution the authorities put the young man’s tongue in a metal screw, then burned the end of his tongue with a hot iron so that it would swell and be impossible to remove from the screw. This precaution was to prevent Hans from being able to witness to his faith while being burned alive.

Anneken Hendricks was 53 years old when she was arrested in Amsterdam. She was charged with having attended “meetings of the accursed Mennonites.” First she was tortured on the rack in an futile effort to compel her to provide names of her fellow Anabaptists. Then she was burned alive, her mouth stuffed with gunpowder to prevent her from speaking “heresy” while being killed.

Felix Manz was a scholar living in Zurich when he adopted the Anabaptist faith. After publicly denying the validity of infant baptism and refusing to allow his children to be baptized, Manz was arrested and sentenced to death. His hands were tied together behind his knees, with a pole between them. Authorities placed him in a boat, rowed him out into Lake Zurich, and pushed him overboard.

These are just three of many examples that could be cited.

Executions of Anabaptists continued into the early 1600’s, and other forms of persecution continued long after that. Eventually and gradually, as religious toleration became the accepted norm, the persecutions would finally cease.

The images are depictions of the executions of Hans Bret, Anneken Hendricks, and Felix Manz.