The Beginnings: Some Basics

The sixteenth-century ancestors of Russian Mennonites were largely Anabaptists from the Low Countries. Because their new vision of church called for voluntary membership marked by adult baptism upon confession of faith, they became one of the most persecuted groups of the Protestant Reformation (note 1). For a millennium re-baptism (ana-baptism) had been considered a heresy punishable by death (note 2), and again in 1529 the Imperial Diet of Speyer called for the “brutal” punishment for those who did not recognize infant baptism.

Many of the earliest Anabaptist cells were found in Belgium and The Netherlands--part of the larger Habsburg Empire ruled after 1555 by “the Most Catholic of Kings,” Philip II of Spain. The North Sea port cities of the Low Countries had some limited freedoms and were places for both commercial and cultural exchange; ships arrived daily not only from other Hanseatic League like Danzig, but also from Florence, Venice and Genoa, the Americas and the Far East. In these cities new ideas were also in wide circulation, like those of the Genevan reformer John Calvin, the German reformer Martin Luther, and the peaceful Dutch Anabaptist leader Menno Simons among others.

There are many good sources that tell the well-researched, broader beginnings of the Anabaptism in the Low Countries. In this blog I offer a few posts related to the city of Bruges--just to give that larger story local profile and an anchor. I think Bruges offers a representative picture of early Anabaptist life and important themes for the longer Mennonite story. But of course other cities could be used too.

Because so many people journeyed through Flemish Hansa cities like Bruges and sought work in its industries, it became a relatively attractive and safe place for people looking for new opportunities or for refuge. Fleeing Anabaptists could be hired for their labour and skills and also connect discreetly with like-minded believers eager to read scripture (the printing press is still relatively new) and explore what obedience and faith might require. Thee first executions of Anabaptists here occurred in 1538. Judicial minutes of November 26, 1561 record the imprisonment of twelve “defenseless” Anabaptists and also note that many “strangers were hiding” in the city, “including fugitives and other suspicious people forced to leave other areas because of heresy.” Amongst latter were “English heterodox believers” and apostate monks “dogmatizing and perverting the people” (note 3). It was in this religiously fertile and dangerous environment that Anabaptist–Mennonite spiritual path found its earliest definitions and patterns.

Most Bruges Anabaptists however had been baptized elsewhere by Dutch and Flemish missionary elders ordained and sent by Menno Simons; Leenaert Bouwens alone reportedly baptized more than 10,000 people. At least one Bruges Anabaptist, Eva Pieters, had been baptized before Menno's conversion by Jan Matthysz, the militant Anabaptist leader in the city of Münster. In 1534, Anabaptists who found refuge in Münster had attempted to establish an “Anabaptist kingdom” with the forceful uprooting of "the ungodly" in anticipation of the coming “New Jerusalem” (note 4). This holy experiment was marked by a variety of excesses including polygamy and the community of goods as they awaited the end-time apocalyptic battle between good and evil. This ended disastrously: the armies of the bishop besieged the city and, once inside, killed almost all the men. The three leaders were caged, severely tortured, displayed throughout the country, and put to death six months later. The next year another 300 Münsterites, and possibly Menno’s brother, occupied a monastery in Friesland near Bolsward, where 37 were beheaded immediately, and another 54 later.

These events moved Menno profoundly and he left the priesthood to become a shepherd to those “poor straying sheep”—like Eva Pieters—“and [to] direct the wandering flock…to the true pastures of Christ” (note 5).

The term “Mennonite” was adopted by several Anabaptist groups a decade later after the tolerant Countess of East Friesland, Anna von Oldenburg, insisted on distinguishing between the “fanatical” Münsterite Anabaptists and the peaceful Menniten—followers of Menno (note 6).

Leaders like Menno Simons and other re-baptizers in Switzerland and South Germany sought in different ways to gather a people who desired to “walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (note 7). The Apostle Paul spoke of being “buried with Christ” in baptism and raised with him in faith (Colossians 2:12), so that “we too might walk in the newness of life” (Romans 6:4; note 8). In this spirit, Menno Simons entitled his first published pamphlet after his renunciation of the papal church in 1536: “The Spiritual Resurrection” (note 9). For Menno, to walk in the resurrection meant putting away the old person of sin and putting on the new person of holiness, and a way of life marked by love toward all people. This call was couched in the millennial assumption that God’s coming kingdom of peace was already breaking in, making participation in that new life possible.

The experiment in Bruges was broadly consistent with the spiritual practices of diverse Anabaptist communities across Europe in the sixteenth century. What hopes compelled them to make these choices? As part of an apocalyptically saturated late mediaeval world, believers’ baptism in Bruges and elsewhere was the sign that would save in the Day of Judgment (note 10). Mennonite theologian Thomas Finger captures the importance of this expectation: “If Jesus has already conquered the powers of evil and if he will surely return to consummate all of God’s plans, then no situation of evil, tragedy, or despair can be as threatening as it looks. It must pass away” (note 11). Premised on the presence of the risen Christ through God’s Spirit, “they held to the conviction that the process of attaining salvation would involve a painful process of renouncing self and following after Jesus Christ into the suffering and the cross” (note 12).

How one could or should "walk" if this is the case was never obvious. But a tradition developed roughly around that question as well as a community of practice that adapted, experimented, and at times even reinvented itself beyond recognition.

This short vignette recalls some of the beginnings that are critical for understanding the decisions and conflicts that shaped the longer Russian Mennonite journey (note 13).

                        --Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: On the origins, see C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 1995).

Note 2: Code of Justinian, Bk. I, title VI.2 (To Avoid the Repetition of Baptism), The Emperors Honorius and Theodosius to Anthemius, Praetorian Prefect, AD 413, in Samuel P. Scott, ed., The Civil Law, vol. 12 (Cincinnati, OH: Central Trust, 1932), XII, 72, https://constitution.org/2-Authors/sps/sps.htm.

Note 3: A. C. de Schrevel, ed., Histoire Séminaire de Bruges, vol. 1 (Bruges: de Planke, 1895), 690, 691, n.2. https://books.google.ca/books?id=sms0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA691#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Note 4: Cf. Walter Klaassen, Living at the End of the Ages. Apocalyptic Expectation in the Radical Reformation (New York: University of America Press, 1992), 45-51.

Note 5: Menno Simons, “Reply to Gellius Faber,” in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, edited by J. C. Wenger (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1984), 670. For Menno's writings online, see http://www.mennosimons.net/writings.html.

Note 6: Anna Oldenburg-Delmenhorst, “On the Treatment of Sectarians,” February 15, 1545, in A. F. Mellink, ed., Documenta Anabaptistica Nederlandica. Part I: Friesland en Groningen (1530–1550) (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 190.

Note 7: Cf. the unique use of the term in article one of the early Swiss and South German “Schleitheim Confession (1527),” in Howard John Loewen, One Lord, One Church, One Hope, One God: Mennonite Confessions of Faith, Text-Reader Series 2 (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1985), 79-84, https://archive.org/details/onelordonechurch02loew/.

Note 8: Simons, “Foundation,” Complete Writings, 122 (see http://www.mennosimons.net/writings.html).

Note 9: Simons, “The Spiritual Resurrection,” Complete Writings, 51–62 (see http://www.mennosimons.net/writings.html).

Note 10: Cf. Sjouke Voolstra, “True Penitence: The Core of Menno Simons’ Theology,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62, no. 3 (July 1988), 387–400.

Note 11: Thomas Finger, Christian Theology: An Eschatological Approach, vol. 1 (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1985), 102, https://archive.org/details/christiantheolog0000fing.

Note 12: Snyder, Following in the Footsteps of Christ, 48. On the defining significance of “long-suffering” (lijdtsaemheyt) in the writings of Jacob de Roore and Flemish Anabaptists generally, 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), 326f.

Note 13: There are many very good sources that rehearse the well-researched anbd broader beginnings of the Anabaptism in the Low Countries. I offer a few posts here related to the city of Bruges to give that larger story a local profile.