Page 350 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

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 Zu€rich. 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-lin or buh-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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