Flemish Anabaptists and Witch Hunts

Political leaders have long used the term "witch hunt"--and there is an historical connection to Mennonites.
Anabaptists and so-called “witches” were arrested and tried for related reasons in the Low Countries in the 1500s: namely, as a means to divert God’s wrath.
The late-Medievals feared that heresy—in this case ana-baptism and the challenge to other sacraments—invited the wrath of God, and was an instrument for the devil’s own hellish apocalyptic assault.
The assumption: the devil's tactics to destroy Christendom included the use of both heretics and sorcerers. Gary Waite writes convincingly that both were seen as “polluting” the community and thus both had to be "excised."

"This fear of pollution, or scandalizing God or the saints, also explains why small numbers of peaceable Mennonites were so harshly treated during the second half of the sixteenth century. Plagues, fires, and economic and social crises were often blamed on the presence of even a small group of individuals believed to be incurring God’s wrath by their very existence within the community." (Note 1)

In Bruges in the 1560s, for example, Friar Cornelis Adriaensz who interrogated many Flemish Anabaptists, accused Herman Vlekwijk of being bewitched (3x), bedeviled (2x), devilish (7x), a devil’s martyr, a devil’s brood, devil possessed, diabolical, hellish (7x), accursed (15x)—not to mention many other things, like being a “great, stupid, awkward ass”! Cornelis warns that whoever drinks “from the venomous breasts of Erasmus” (note 2) to deny young children a church-sanctioned baptism, denies them a protective defense from the devil’s assaults, for in baptism “the devil is exercised by the priest" (note 3).

His use of language was particular vulgar, and could match that of some in the political sphere today.

Inquisitor Cornelis demonstrated a fearful fascination with women and with “that” which “your filthy, sinful wives do with you,” “your filthy, unchaste, carnal wives” (Sorry, it's all in the Martyrs Mirror !). He imagines that Anabaptist men have “maidens” and their “women in common … like dogs,” and on this basis “gain such a great number of adherents” in Bruges. It is at this point in the interrogation of Herman Vlekwijk that Brother Cornelis moves from interrogation to torture: “Bah, you are filthy, carnal, unchaste, voluptuous rogues, that you thus use the women in common, like dogs” (which he repeats), and then says: “Bah, if I cannot prevail upon you with kindness, I must try whether I can do it with severity" (note 4).

In particular, enmity directed at the church’s highest sacraments was deemed to be nothing short of demonic. Anabaptists openly desecrated Bruges’s most treasured and celebrated relic since the high medieval ages. “The Precious Blood of Jesus,” a cloth with the blood of Christ purportedly collected by Joseph of Arimathea was brought to the city after the sacking of Constantinople in the Second Crusade (see note 5; pic 2).

The cloth gave the Bruges basilica its name and glory, and the city God’s favour and protection--as was widely understood in the sixteenth century, just as Bruges's fortunes and shipping access to the sea were beginning to dry-up.

Anabaptist Jacob de Roore (or "Candle Maker"; pic 3) was accused by his Franciscan inquisitor in Bruges with the following (among other things): “Your breaking of bread, and distribution of the cup is the devil’s supper for you … [you] do not bless your cup, nor do you consecrate your bit of bread, but it is wine and bread, and remains wine and bread” (note 6).

“You Anabaptists neither believe nor observe anything of them [i.e., the Holy Councils], except it be very plainly stated in the holy Scriptures. … I could very well show you this from the ancient fathers, but you Anabaptists will rely most firmly on the holy Scriptures alone” (note 7).

In his rage and frustration with the responses by de Roore, the inquisitor declared that he was true victim of torture (witch hunt?):

“You would drive an hundred thousand doctors of divinity mad and crazy”; “see wherewith we are now tormented and vexed”; “I could tear my cap with anger”! (Note 8)

De Roore wrote his congregation from prison: “it will please you to know that I was with the scholars four times, and they would have liked to draw me from my faith. … Three times I was with the provincials of the Augustinians … and once with the preacher of the Gray Brothers [Franciscan], named Brother Cornelis” (note 9; see pic 3).

No doubt Friar Cornelis and other interrogators did their work with pious intention based especially upon their end-time expectations and fear of God's wrath.

And 450 years later ... we still talk about witch hunts, and sometimes Christians (on both sides) anxiously fear the wrath of God if something is not done or eradicated soon.

--Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See Gary Waite, Eradicating the Devil’s Minions. Anabaptists and Witches in Reformation Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 126f.; also 200 and 197. https://books.google.ca/books?id=Y0XbgWXKYAEC&lpg=PP1&dq=Eradicating%20the%20Devil%E2%80%99s%20Minions.%20Anabaptists%20and%20Witches%20in%20Reformation%20Europe.%20Toronto%3A%20University%20of%20Toronto%20Press%2C%202007.&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Note 2: Thieleman Van Braght, Martyrs Mirror: The Story of Fifteen Centuries of Martyrdom (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 2001), 789, 795; 793. https://archive.org/details/TheBloodyTheaterOrMartyrsMirrorOfTheDefenselessChristians/page/n783.

Note 3: Van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 788.

Note 4: Van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 796, 797; cf. also 779f.

Note 5: "The Procession of the Holy Blood," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procession_of_the_Holy_Blood; also "The Basilica of the Holy Blood," https://visit-bruges.be/see/churches/basilica-holy-blood.

Note 6: Van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 791. With reference to 1 Corinthians 10:21 (“You cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons”), Menno’s 1539 “Foundation of Christian Doctrine” accused the Roman Church of the same, because it “admits all” (including the “avaricious, the proud, the ostentatious …”) and is celebrated with offensive “pomp and splendor” by ministers “who really seek nothing but worldly honor, ease and the belly” (Complete Writings of Menno Simons, edited by J. C. Wenger [Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1984], 142 [also here: https://archive.org/details/completeworksofm00menn/page/n8]; cf. also de Roore in van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 783). With respect to Menno, in all points of doctrine the Flemish Mennonites were consistent with his “Foundation.”

Note 7: Van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 789. See also A. L. E. Verheyden, Anabaptism in Flanders, 1530–1650 (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1961), 126, n. 32, https://archive.org/details/anabaptisminflan0000verh.

Note 8: Van Braght, Martyrs Mirror, 795, 789, 797, 794.

Note 9: Translated in 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; 319.

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