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There are several terms utilized in categorizing and labeling these groups:
There is great disadvantage in lumping together all these splintered and internally contradictory groups. Such a totally heterogeneous and unnatural grouping can be characterized as a whole only in the most general sense. When considering the fragile generalizations that can safely be made regarding this whole composite some scholars have concluded that the whole movement is best characterized by simple-mindedness and ignorance--a totally unobjective conclusion!
Many but by no means all these people espoused a pietistic morality based on their interpretation of the New Testament. Some refused to take oaths, to hold office, to serve in war, or to favor capital punishment. Remember, these people are almost everywhere a self-conscious social minority who have rejected society's standards and values.
Many but by no means all explain salvation in mystical terms.
Many but by no means all define the church as including only the saved. Those who emphasize the sacraments consider them exclusively for the saved.
Many but by no means all came to support the principle of separation of Church and State, especially in so far as the prevailing union of State and Church effectively endangered their existence. Most, however, if they were in majority would not hesitate to impose their religious convictions on everybody else.
Most, but perhaps not all, carried individualism to extremes. Bigotry and intolerance for each other is frequently demonstrated in their history.
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The following classification of radicals was employed by A.H. Newman, A Manual of Church History, 1902, and provides some valid clarifications. He classified the whole group of radicals according to their most universal characteristic, as Anti-Pedobaptists. The radicals further subdivided themselves into a number of loose categories depending upon their teaching and practices. Generally speaking some of these positions tended more toward the complete rejection of baptism than toward anabaptism despite the tendency of modern scholars to characterize them all as "anabaptists".
The reforming radicals had their heyday of freedom and popular growth between 1525 and 1535. The established Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed Churches closed ranks in opposition to the radicals by 1535. Thereafter there remained only a few isolated havens in Europe where the otherwise minded were able to snatch the freedom to practice, or not to practice, religion as they pleased.
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Thomas Müntzer was a product of the universities at Leipzig and Frankfurt and an acquaintance of Martin Luther. Indeed, Luther recommended Müntzer as pastor of the church at Zwickau. As pastor Müntzer began to develop his radical theories. His preaching stirred up so much unrest the city council of Zwickau in 1521 started proceedings against him just before he fled to Prague in Bohemia where he repeated his mistakes and was forced to move elsewhere. From the Spring of 1523 to the summer of 1524 Müntzer was pastor at Alstedt, a parish near Eisleben. Here his ideas developed further. Again attracting the attention of the authorities--the Saxon Elector called him to come to Weimar to explain his actions. Instead he fled to Mühlhausen where he soon was instructed to leave by the city council. Nevertheless he returned there early in 1525 seeking to take over the city and reform it religiously, socially and economically into a communist theocracy. By May of 1525 Müntzer had been defeated, arrested, tried, and executed through the combined efforts of the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Brunswick.
When Zwickau ousted Thomas Müntzer in 1521 they also expelled some of his closest followers who came to be known as the Zwickau Prophets. Three of them showed up at Wittenberg early in 1522 where the situation was already fraught with confusion because of Luther's absence. Markus Stübner and Nickolas Storch are identified by name, but the third party's name has not been preserved. Stübner was a former student at Wittenberg, but Storch and his unnamed companion were both illiterate weavers. The thing that impressed Melanchthon about them was their knowledge of the Bible and the assertion that they were directly inspired by God and could prophesy by means of visions.
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In 1522-23 in Zurich two humanist educated churchmen, Conrad Grebel and Felix Mantz, disagreed with their leader, Zwingli, in his allowing the city council to decide on actions to take in the reformation. Grebel and Mantz gathered some equally dissatisfied colleagues together and began to search the scriptures and write letters to other reformers such as Luther, Carlstadt and Müntzer in search of answers on several unresolved issues. The group included Balthasar Hubmaier, Simon Stumpf, George Blaurock, William Reublin and John Brotli.
The first issue had to do with the definition of the church. Was it to be understood as a confessional body or an all-inclusive body? Was the church to be controlled by the clerical hierarchy or be free to select its own ministers? Not every member of the group proceeded with the same balance of convictions and dissatisfactions, but they continued to seek. When in October, 1523, Zwingli was able to persuade the city council that the mass was unscriptural, the council nevertheless insisted that the mass continue to be offered. This raised another issue; should the government make decisions for the church. Simon Stumpf resigned his priestly assignment in November, 1523, on the grounds that the church should be understood to include believers only. Stumpf was exiled by the town council.
Also in the fall of 1523 William Reublin and John Brotli who like Stumpf had pastoral responsibilities but did not resign. They simply ceased baptizing infants born to their parishioners. This lead to another disputation before the city council held on January 17, 1524. Although Zwingli had earlier expressed some questions about infant baptism he now argued strongly in opposition to believer's baptism and in favor of infant baptism. The council decreed on January 18, 1525, that all persons refusing to allow infants to be baptized must be expelled. Three days later the council outlawed private Bible study groups.
That very evening a group of men met at the home of Felix Mantz for prayer and Bible study. George Blaurock requested that Conrad Grebel baptize him. This is the first recorded case of adult baptism in the Reformation. Blaurock then baptized the others thus forming the foundation for the Swiss Brethren. It is not altogether clear that this baptism practiced by the Swiss Brethren was by immersion; indeed, there are good reasons to suspect that it wasn't.
In February, 1525, Zurich authorities began to arrest whole families whose infants had not been baptized. Conrad Grebel, Felix Mantz and George Blaurock left Zurich to preach their ideas elsewhere. They were arrested and returned in October, 1625, and participated in another disputation in November. They were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment, but they escaped.
In March, 1525, the city council ruled that all persistent anabaptists would be executed by being drowned. Felix Mantz was recaptured and drowned, January 15, 1527. Conrad Grebel died of the plague a year and a half later at age 28.
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William Reublin left Zurich in 1525 going by way of Waldshut where Balthasar Hubmaier was then priest. Hubmaier had already announced to his congregation in January that he was under the command of God to repudiate infant baptism. Reublin apparently was there long enough to baptize Hubmaier and sixty of his parishioners a few days before Easter. Hubmaier himself baptized 300 more on Easter Sunday. Soon authorities scattered his congregation and Hubmaier was arrested in Zurich and imprisoned. He was forced to recant his views to gain release. Nevertheless, he published a treatise entitled The Christian Baptism of Believers in 1525 that won him many followers. He traveled first to Constance, then to Augsburg where he organized a free church of baptized believers. From Augsburg he moved to Regensburg for a while and then to Nikolsburg in Moravia where he found a Lutheran congregation and converted them to his confessional church beliefs and baptized them. His writing and preaching attracted many persecuted people from other parts of Germany and Switzerland. Eventually he and his wife were arrested and taken to Vienna where he was burned at the stake and his wife drowned in the Danube, in March 1528.
One of Hubmaiers' converts at Augsburg was Hans Denk a well-known Latin scholar who had been head of the cathedral school of St. Sebald at Nurenberg. His agitation for reform in the church and society led to his being expelled from Nurenberg in January 1525. Denk wrote a number of works drawing heavily on German mysticism and Christian Platonism. He called for the establishment of Theocratic Christian communities. Leaving the Augsburg congregation he wandered to Strasbourg, then down the Rhine to Worms, and finally back up the river to Basel where he died in the plague in 1527.
Another of the Augsburg congregation who became prominent was Hans Hut. Hut had been baptized by Denk in 1526. Hut had been a follower of Thomas Müntzer and had picked up some radical ideas about the end of the world and the coming of the kingdom of God. Renouncing the violence of Müntzer's movement Hut became a traveling preacher avoiding the authorities for two years as he moved from Strasbourg across Germany to Moravia. He may well have baptized more converts than any other reform leader in the radical group.
Denk became concerned about the message Hut was preaching so he organized a campaign in August, 1527, to combat his radicalism by sending preachers out to correct the views of his converts. Most of these were not as successful as Hut had been in avoiding the authorities. The Augsburg city council was so roused by the bad press they were getting from their neighbors, that they cracked down on the free church group and stamped out the local congregation by the fall of 1528.
Before Hubmaier's arrest his congregation had split. Hubmaier led the part of the congregation willing to serve their country as statesmen or soldiers, but the other part of the congregation led by Jakob Wiedemann were pacifists. Wiedemann had come to Nikolsburg in Moravia after being baptized by Hans Hut. The split actually occurred in May 1527 when Hans Hut himself came to the community, possibly at Wiedemann's invitation and held a disputation with Hubmaier. Both congregations remained in the community at Nikolsburg.
Shortly after Hubmaier's arrest another of the many refugees arrived at Nikolsburg. Jakob Huter, a hat maker from southern Austria who had been baptized by George Blaurock and was now the leader of a small congregation Blaurock had formed in that area, came to see about moving the congregation to Moravia. Blaurock had just been arrested and burned at the stake by Austrian authorities in 1529. Huter was more impressed by Wiedemann's group than by the more moderate group. The local ruler at Nikolsburg about this time asked the Wiedemann group consisting of about 200 to leave the area. Huter and his group joined in the new location at Austerlitz where they established an isolated communistic community for the congregation. The community was called a Brüderhof, a community of brethren. Huter succeeded Wiedemann and gave his name to the movement, the Huterites or Huterite Brethren. Other Brüderhofs were established. Because of their isolation Huter himself survived until 1536 when he was burned at the stake in Innsbruck, and the movement survived perhaps more successfully than other more public movements.
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The first effort to give some overall definition to the movement that started with the Swiss Brethren from Zurich came as a result of its interaction with the more radical reformers like Denk and Hut. Michael Sattler a former monk and convert to Lutheranism fled to Zurich in 1525 and joined the Swiss Brethren just before their exile. He limited his subsequent ministry to the Duchy of Württemberg. In February, 1527, Sattler drew up a statement consisting of seven articles summarizing the teachings he had gained from Conrad Grebel in the light of growing controversy. These articles were approved by a synod of Swiss Brethren at Schleitheim on the border between Württemberg and Schaffhausen. The Schleitheim Articles, known also as the Brotherly Union was this movement's first formal confession of faith. The issues dealt with included:
Shortly after the Schleitheim meeting Sattler and thirteen of his congregation including his wife were arrested. Sattler was tortured extensively before being burned at the stake. The thirteen were also executed; some by the sword and some by water.
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The Strasbourg churches were already being reformed according to the Reformed Church pattern set by Zwingli under the leadership of Zell, Capito, and Bucer. The more radical reformers were actually protected by the moderate leaders who found it profitable to have them available for disputations. William Reublin served as the radical spokesman for a time but was replaced by Pilgrim Marpeck, a mining engineer originally from southern Austria. Marpeck had been in Württemberg and had come under the ministry of Sattler before he was martyred. That experience sealed the determination of several of the survivors to join the radical congregation in Strasbourg. Marpeck improved his skills in debate and was gaining points on Bucer, so he was exiled in 1532. He spent the next twelve years wandering around southern Germany before settling at Augsburg as city engineer. He became an influential radical theologian although he had no formal training.
Pilgrim Marpeck got into a long range literary dispute with Caspar von Schwenckfeld regarding the latter's spiritualizing the teachings of the New Testament. Schwenckfeld thought no conclusion was possible in many religious issues and practices. Marpeck argued that Schwenckfeld wouldn't have been satisfied to have had Jesus himself as a fellow church member. The true church, Schwenckfeld argued, is invisible and inward; therefore, the outward arrangements must be de-emphasized.
Melchior Hofman, an illiterate fur trader from the Scandinavian region, first a Lutheran, next switched to Zwingli, and finally became a radical. One of the Zwickau Prophets, Nicholas Storch, was also in Strasbourg and may have influenced Hofman who developed a strong conviction about the Last Things. After a disputation with Bucer, Hofman felt too uncomfortable to remain in Strasbourg so he began preaching down the Rhine. As he moved along his ideas evolved. Soon he was preaching that Strasbourg was going to be the New Jerusalem and that he was the Second Elijah commissioned to announce the coming of Christ in 1533. His itinerary took him in North Germany in the direction of Denmark. He advocated secret societies, but did not call for re-baptism or any other preparation. He came to Strasbourg again in 1530 and ended up in jail. When 1533 passed while he was in jail he promptly recalculated.
Meanwhile the Prophet Enoch appeared in Holland. Enoch was none other than Jan Matthys, a baker from Haarlem. Matthys put out the call for all believers to gather at the north German city of Munster to await the coming of the millennium. Munster was chosen because of recent radical success in an otherwise Lutheran town. When a local merchant was rebaptized within a week 1400 others had been rebaptized. Matthys sent John of Leyden to organize the town for the great in gathering. When Matthys himself arrived in February 1534 he announced that Munster would be the capital of the millennial kingdom and that all current residents had to be rebaptized or leave. Meanwhile Matthys was killed and John of Leyden assumed the leadership with the title "King David". Leyden married Matthys' widow and fifteen other girls all under 20 years of age. Since there were three or four times as many women as men in Munster, polygamy was instituted. All women were forced to marry and society was organized along communal lines. Before long Munster's Catholic and Protestant neighbors joined forces to end all this. The siege of the city brought much famine and suffering before the city fell in June, 1535. John of Leyden and other leaders were tortured to death and their bones rotted in iron cages hanging from the steeple of the cathedral in a neighboring town. Not a single man survived the massacre at Munster.
After the defeat of the Munster kingdom authorities all over Europe became much more oppressive of the radicals. The surviving radicals after 1535 did so by staying underground and restricting his public contacts and cultivating totally unobjectionable relations with their neighbors.
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