History of the Russian Mennonites

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 ( a na -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 Ea...

In the latter half of the sixteenth century Protestantism gradually spread throughout the northern Netherlands in the form of Calvinism—which had a direct impact on Anabaptists. When the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands led by the exiled Protestant Prince William of Orange went to war against Spain in 1568, persecution of Anabaptists in Catholic Flanders increased again. Long before the Protestant Northern Provinces would declare independence in 1581, the inquisition against Anabaptists in Bruges, for example, had achieved its goal. With the last two Anabaptist executions in the city in 1573, the once large and thriving Mennonite congregation was extinguished. Subsequently Mennonites lived in Bruges only on rare occasions, and when present, for only a short time, as for example the well-known art historian Karel van Mander in 1582 ( note 1 ). In the Northern Provinces Calvinism had become attractive theologically and politically. Not only was Christian resistance to tyrannical gov...

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 ...

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 smal...