"What shall I do? The more I kill the greater becomes their number!": the suppression of Anabaptism in early sixteenth century

• Main Author: Margot Kottelin-Longley
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Donner Institute 2006-01-01
• Series: Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
• Subjects: Power (Religion); Anabaptists; Violence; Church renewal > Protestant churches; Reformation; Europe > Church history
• Online Access: https://journal.fi/scripta/article/view/67308
• ISSN: 0582-3226; 2343-4937

The Anabaptist movement was a ‘common man’s reform movement’ in Luther’s Europe. The Anabaptists wanted to reform the church according to New Testament guidelines more radically than either Luther or Zwingli were ready to do. For example, they baptised adults instead of infants, because they had observed that only adults were baptised in the Gospels, including the baptism of Jesus. In reformation Europe any adults baptised by these reformers would have already received baptism as infants. It was this practise of re-baptising members of the Catholic Church that gave them the name ‘Anabaptists’. ‘Re-baptism’ was a heresy deserving death, and to classify these radical reformers thus made them legally subject to execution. In this article the author first explains what she means by the ‘Anabaptist movement’. This includes an introduction to early Swiss Anabaptism and to the way in which it was speedily persecuted by the religious authorities. This persecution caused flight and that in turn caused the movement to spread. As the number of Anabaptists increased to thousands, so did the persecution by torture and death. Stories of some Anabaptist martyrs are recounted during the course of this article. The author also looks at the various justifications for the burning of heretics, as well as at the corresponding theological understanding by those who were burned.