Bruges - Flemish Mennonite/ Anabaptist Reformation

The Russian Mennonite beginnings stretch back to the Reformation in the sixteenth century in the Low Countries, including Flanders and the beautiful and historic city of Bruges.

Many regularly appearing Russian Mennonites names are represented in the Anabaptist group in Bruges, for example, and can also be used as a window onto the larger story.

In a 1576 report on Bruges, Monk Alfonso of St. Emilian wrote to Philip II--the "most Catholic" of Emperors--that the “city is completely infected by said heretical pest more than any other city of the region. … it is a refuge and a storehouse of all heretics and miscreants. Of a thousand homes in that city, not one is pure" (note 1).

Most famously, a "Group of 12" Anabaptists were martyred in Bruges in 1561 (note 2; pic). A hymn was written to remember these “twelve friends killed in Bruges”; the entire story is sung in twelve verses and each martyr is individually named (note 3; pic 3). The hymn entitled “Grace and Peace must be Godly” is found in a Flemish Mennonite hymnal first published in the 16th century—predating the Martyrs Mirror. It was reprinted frequently and in use as late as 1750. The unnamed hymn writer offers the verses as an “example” to inspire faithfulness to God’s Word and joy in suffering

The first Anabaptist executions in Bruges occurred as early as 1538, and these continued with sporadic intensity for the next thirty-five years until all had fled, recanted or were killed.

Almost all of the Bruges Anabaptists had already fled from harsher repression in the cities of Antwerp and Ghent or the south Flemish Kortrijk region (note 4). In Bruges they could be hired for their labour and skills, and also connect discreetly with like-minded believers eager to read the Bible and explore together what obedience of faith might require of them.

Amongst those executed in Bruges (note 5) beyond the twelve were a thirty-seven year old candlemaker and weaver, Jacob de Roore (note 6); two tailors and businessmen Herman Vlekwijk and Mattheus Keuse; a linen weaver; two silk weavers including Maillaert de Grave noted above, who later recanted but was still executed; a sheep shearer and hatter; a basket maker; a miller; a rope maker Jan Diericxsone, who was “graciously” beheaded and had likely recanted; a wood-cutter and local Bruges citizen; a shepherd; an author of various anti-Catholic writings; an actor and rhetorician, Jan Verveste, or Jan Van der Veste (note 7).

One of the Anabaptist weavers put to death in Bruges, Jacob de Swarte, had eighteen family members executed in Flanders between 1558 and 1567.

The first Anabaptists martyred in Bruges were exclusively women—seven were executed over an eleven day period in August 1538. Josyne Schricx was burnt alive without being first strangulated, which was customary for women (considered more merciful). Marguerite Inghels and Magdalena de Vos recanted but were then buried alive, which was considered to be the worst form of execution. Livine Verwee perished giving birth in prison.

In 1568, fourteen Anabaptists were meeting in Bruges and found by police; of the five who did not recant, four were women: Lauwereinse Huutgheers, Maycken’s Heeren; Jacquemijne de Wilde, Cathalijne Loury.

Some younger Anabaptists were tricked with “cunning” interrogations and recanted, like the eighteen-year-old Callekin, daughter of preacher Pauwels Vermaete. Hans, the fifteen-year-old son of Jan Verveste, escaped the Bruges prison with his accomplice Cornelis Jansins after they cut through the iron bars, made a rope from bed-sheets and lowered themselves to the street below. Hans’ eighteen year-old brother Lievin, a textile maker, was released.

One source reported that between the end of October and the beginning of November 1572, 140 heretics were executed in Bruges (note 8; see pic 1). The last Mennonite martyr of Bruges was a twenty-one-year-old hatter, Adriaen de Hoedemaker, who died in 1573.

While the Anabaptist beginnings in Bruges were tragically short-lived, the Bruges martyrology and confessions have not only contributed to a cherished Anabaptist heritage, but helped to establish the principle of religious tolerance in places like The Netherlands (note 9).

This longer narrative description of the Anabaptist community in Bruges is one starting point for understanding the Mennonites of Prussia and Russia. The movement in Flanders was not led by the educated elite or magisterium, whether Prince or Pope, nor was it contingent on one elder. Rather, it was lay-led by inventive artisans who were discovering a conscious Christian identity for the first time and who dared push back the constraints of inherited orthodoxy.

-Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

--Notes--

Note 1: Cited in A. L. E. Verheyden, Anabaptism in Flanders (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1961), 80, https://archive.org/details/anabaptisminflan0000verh. See also A. C. de Schrevel, Histoire Séminaire de Bruges, vol. 1 (Bruges: de Planke, 1895), 691f., https://books.google.ca/books?id=sms0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA691#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Note 2: Thieleman J. Van Braght, The Martyrs’ Mirror: The Story of Fifteen Centuries of Martyrdom (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2001), 655f. https://archive.org/details/TheBloodyTheaterOrMartyrsMirrorOfTheDefenselessChristians/page/n653.

Note 3: Philipp Wackernagel, Lieder der niederländischen Reformierten aus der Zeit der Verfolgung im 16. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1867), 130, https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10591883_00156.html.

Note 4: Cf. Verheyden, Anabaptism in Flanders, 51f.

Note 5: Names from A. L. E. Verheyden, "Het Brugse Martyrologium (1527–1573)," (Brussel: Wilco, 1944), http://www.theologienet.nl/documenten/Verheyden%20Brugse%20Martyrologium.pdf. See also: Ludo Vandamme, “Doopsgezinden in Brugge, 1555–1575,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen, nieuwe reeks, no. 24 (1998) 9–24, http://www.dhkonline.nl/publicaties/db_nr/nr_24_1998/009a_aa_024-24_1998/.

Note 6: Cf. Martha J. Reimer-Blok, “The Theological Identity of Flemish Anabaptists: A Study of the Letters of Jacob de Roore,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62, no. 3 (July 1988) 318–331.

Note 7: The children of Jan Verweste (Van der Veste) were later freed. Only twenty-four years later (1582) an Arendt Veste was amongst the first Flemish Anabaptists to appear in the Danzig region, where he had signed a petition by Werder Mennonites to the Council of the City of Danzig (G. Reimer, “Fast [Feste, Faast, Vast] family,” Mennonite Encyclopedia/ GAMEO: https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Fast_(Feste,_Faast,_Vast)_family).

Note 8: Verheyden, "Het Brugse Martyrologium (1527–1573)," 61.

Note 9: Cf. Gary Waite, “A Reappraisal of the Contribution of Anabaptists to the Religious Culture and Intellectual Climate of the Dutch Republic,” in Religious Minorities and Cultural Diversity in the Dutch Republic, edited by August den Hollander, et al., 6–28 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019), 7, 27.

Pic 1: Burning of Anton Ijsbaerts, Flanders 1573; from the Martyrs Mirror.

Comments

The End of Schardau (and other Molotschna villages), 1941

My grandmother was four-years old when her parents moved from Petershagen, Molotschna to Schardau in 1908. This story is larger than that of Schardau, but tells how this village and many others in Molotschna were evacuated by Stalin days before the arrival of German troops in 1941. -ANF The bridge across the Dnieper at Chortitza was destroyed by retreating Soviet troops on August 18, 1941 and the hydroelectric dam completed near Einlage in 1932 was also dynamited by NKVD personnel—killing at least 20,000 locals downstream, and forcing the Germans to cross further south at Nikopol. For the next six-and-a-half weeks, the old Mennonite settlement area of Chortitza was continuously shelled by Soviet troops from Zaporozhje on the east side of the river ( note 1 ). The majority of Russian Germans in Crimea and Ukraine paid dearly for Germany’s Blitzkrieg and plans for racially-based population resettlements. As early as August 3, 1941, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Forces received noti...

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

Russia: A Refuge for all True Christians Living in the Last Days

If only it were so. It was not only a fringe group of Russian Mennonites who believed that they were living the Last Days. This view was widely shared--though rejected by the minority conservative Kleine Gemeinde. In 1820 upon the recommendation of Rudnerweide (Frisian) Elder Franz Görz, the progressive and influential Mennonite leader Johann Cornies asked the Mennonite Tobias Voth (b. 1791) of Graudenz, Prussia to come and lead his Agricultural Association’s private high school in Ohrloff, in the Russian Mennonite colony of Molotschna. Voth understood this as nothing less than a divine call upon his life ( note 1; pic 3 ). In Ohrloff Voth grew not only a secondary school, but also a community lending library, book clubs, as well as mission prayer meetings, and Bible study evenings. Voth was the son of a Mennonite minister and his wife was raised Lutheran ( note 2 ). For some years, Voth had been strongly influenced by the warm, Pietist devotional fiction writings of Johann Heinrich Ju...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

What were Molotschna Mennonites reading in the early 1840s?

Johann Cornies expanded his Agricultural Society School library in Ohrloff to become a lending library “for the instruction and better enlightenment of every adult resident.” The library was overseen by the Agricultural Society; in 1845, patrons across the colony paid 1 ruble annually to access its growing collection of 355 volumes (see note 1 ). The great majority of the volumes were in German, but the library included Russian and some French volumes, with a large selection of handbooks and periodicals on agronomy and agriculture—even a medical handbook ( note 2 ). Philosophical texts included a German translation of George Combe’s The Constitution of Man ( note 3 ) and its controversial theory of phrenology, and the political economist Johann H. G. Justi’s Ergetzungen der vernünftigen Seele —which give example of the high level of reading and reflection amongst some colonists. The library’s teaching and reference resources included a history of science and technology with an accomp...

Volendam and the Arrival in South America, 1947

The Volendam arrived at the port in Buenos Aires, Argentina on February 22, 1947, at 5 PM, exactly three weeks after leaving from Bremerhaven. They would be followed by three more refugee ships in 1948. The harassing experiences of refugee life were now truly far behind them. Curiously a few months later the American Embassy in Moscow received a formal note of protest claiming that Mennonites, who were Soviet citizens, had been cleared by the American military in Germany for emigration to Paraguay even though the Soviet occupation forces “did not (repeat not) give any sanction whatever for the dispatch of Soviet citizens to Paraguay” ( note 1 ). But the refugees knew that they were beyond even Stalin’s reach and, despite many misgivings about the Chaco, believed they were the hands of good people and a sovereign God. In Buenos Aires the Volendam was anticipated by North American Mennonite Central Committee workers responsible for the next leg of the resettlement journey. Elisabeth ...

Penmanship: School Exercise Samples, 1869 and 1883

Johann Cornies recommended “penmanship as the pedagogical means for [developing] a sense of beauty” ( note 1 ). Schönschreiben --calligraphy or penmanship--appears in the handwritten school plans and manuals of Tobias Voth (Ohrloff, 1820), Jakob Bräul (Rudnerweide, 1830), and Heinrich Heese (Ohrloff, 1842). Heese had a list of related supplies required for each pupil, including “a Bible, slate, slate pencil, paper, straight edge, lead pencil, quill pen, quill knife, ink bottle, three candlesticks, three snuffers, and a container to keep supplies; the teacher will provide water color ( Tusche ) and ink” ( note 2 ). The standard school schedule at this time included ten subject areas: Bible; reading; writing; recitation and composition; arithmetic; geography; singing; recitation and memory work; and preparation of the scripture for the following Sunday worship—and penmanship ( note 3 ). Below are penmanship samples first from the Molotschna village school of Tiege, 1869. This student...

On Becoming the Quiet in the Land

They are fair questions: “What happened to the firebrands of the Reformation? How did the movement become so withdrawn--even "dour and unexciting,” according to one historian? Mennonites originally referred to themselves as the “quiet in the land” in contrast to the militant--definitely more exciting--militant revolutionaries of Münster ( note 1 ), and identification with Psalm 35:19f.: “Let not my enemies gloat over me … For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful schemes against those who live quietly in the land.” How did Mennonites become the “quiet in the land” in Royal Prussia? Minority non-citizen groups in Poland like Jews, Scots, Huguenots or the much smaller body of Mennonites did not enjoy full political or economic rights as citizens. Ecclesial and civil laws left linguistic or religious minorities vulnerable to extortion. Such groups sought to negotiate a Privilegium or charter with the king, which set out a legal basis for some protections of life an...

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog