Western Civilization

would lead to in the sixteenth century. Unable to find

peaceful ways to agree on the meaning of the Gospel,

the disciples of Christianity resorted to violence and

decision by force. When he heard of Zwingli’s death,

Martin Luther, who had not forgotten the confronta-

tion at Marburg, is supposed to have remarked that

Zwingli “got what he deserved.”

The Radical Reformation: The Anabaptists

Although many reformers were ready to allow the state

to play an important, if not dominant, role in church

affairs, some people rejected this kind of magisterial

reformation and favored a far more radical reform

movement. Collectively called the Anabaptists, these

radicals were actually members of a large variety of

groups who had certain characteristics in common.

To the Anabaptists, the true Christian church was a

voluntary association of believers who had undergone

spiritual rebirth and had then been baptized into the

church. Anabaptists advocated adult rather than infant

baptism. No one, they believed, should be forced to

accept the Bible as truth. They also tried to return liter-

ally to the practices and spirit of early Christianity.

Adhering to the accounts of early Christian commun-

ities in the New Testament, they followed a strict sort

of democracy in which all believers were considered

equal. Each church chose its own minister, who might

be any member of the community because all Chris-

tians were considered priests (though women were of-

ten excluded). Those chosen as ministers had the duty

to lead services, which were very simple and contained

nothing not found in the early church. Calling them-

selves “Christians” or “Saints,” Anabaptists, like the

early Christians, accepted that they would have to suf-

fer for their faith. They rejected theological speculation

in favor of simple Christian living according to what

they believed was the pure word of God. The Lord’s

Supper was interpreted as a remembrance, a meal of

fellowship celebrated in the evening in private houses

according to Jesus’s example.

Unlike the Catholics and other Protestants, most

Anabaptists believed in the complete separation of

church and state. Not only was government to be

excluded from the realm of religion, but it was not

even supposed to exercise political jurisdiction over

true Christians. Human law had no power over those

whom God had saved. Anabaptists refused to hold po-

litical office or bear arms because many took the com-

mandment “Thou shall not kill” literally, although

some Anabaptist groups did become quite violent.

Their political beliefs as much as their religious beliefs

caused the Anabaptists to be regarded as dangerous

radicals who threatened the fabric of sixteenth-century

society. Indeed, the chief thing Protestants and Catho-

lics could agree on was the need to stamp out the

Anabaptists.

One early group of Anabaptists known as the

Swiss Brethren arose in Z€urich. Their ideas frightened

Zwingli, and they were expelled from the city in 1523.

As their teachings spread through southern Germany,

the Austrian Habsburg lands, and Switzerland, Ana-

baptists suffered ruthless persecution, especially after

the Peasants’ War of 1524–1525, when the upper

classes resorted to repression. Virtually eliminated in

Germany, Anabaptist survivors emerged in Moravia,

Poland, and the Netherlands.

Menno Simons (1496–1561) was the man most re-

sponsible for rejuvenating Dutch Anabaptism. A pop-

ular leader, Menno dedicated his life to the spread of

a peaceful, evangelical Anabaptism that stressed sepa-

ration from the world in order to truly emulate the

life of Jesus. The Mennonites, as his followers were

called, spread from the Netherlands into northwest-

ern Germany and eventually into Poland and Lithua-

nia as well as the New World. Both the Mennonites

and Amish, who are also descended from the Anabap-

tists, maintain communities in the United States and

Canada today.

The Reformation in England

The English Reformation was initiated by King Henry

VIII (1509–1547), who wanted to divorce his first wife,

Catherine of Aragon, because she had failed to produce

a male heir. Furthermore, Henry had fallen in love with

Anne Boleyn (BUH-linorbuh-LIN), a lady-in-waiting to

Queen Catherine. Anne’s unwillingness to be only the

king’s mistress and the king’s desire to have a legiti-

mate male heir made their marriage imperative, but

the king’s first marriage stood in the way.

Normally, church authorities might have been will-

ing to grant the king an annulment of his marriage,

but Pope Clement VII was dependent on the Holy

Roman emperor, Charles V, who happened to be Cath-

erine’s nephew. Impatient with the pope’s inaction,

Henry sought to obtain an annulment of his marriage

in England’s own ecclesiastical courts. As archbishop of

Canterbury and head of the highest ecclesiastical court

in England, Thomas Cranmer held official hearings on

the king’s case and ruled in May 1533 that the king’s

312 Chapter 13 Reformation and Religious Warfare in the Sixteenth Century

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