Anabaptists: Impeterial Driven Reformation

Although Catholicism was the dominant faith at the heart of Europe, with the pope as the head of the Catholic Church in Rome, dissatisfaction with the affairs of the church gave a voice to various theological interpretations. Radical reformers, commonly known as Anabaptist, particularly had an impact in the sixteenth century reformation of Europe. Unlike the magisterial reformers, which occurred under the leadership of Luther and Zwingli with the cooperation of the state leaders, the theological interpretation of the Radicals offered an alternative and a more revolutionary conclusion from the aims and views of the magisterial driven Reformation. As George Huntston Williams stated that there were “Anabaptists of various types” and Hans Jürgen-Goertz
This is supported by Williams as he wrote: “By 1524 it had become plain that the differences went deeper: the regular Zwinglians sought the gradual reformation of the whole of the Swiss Commonwealth, while the Radicals were calling for the precipitate of a righteous remnant.” Although the Anabaptist and Zwingli were striving for a Christian Commonwealth, the Anabaptist had become specific about the relationship of faith. For example, a disputation between Zwingli and Grebel took place on January 1525 when the Anabaptist’s began “to question the appropriateness of infant baptism” believing that it was the only way one understands the significance of the sacraments. This resulted in the council favouring Zwingli and banning all Anabaptists from practicing their beliefs in the city with severe punishment for disobeying with death. On March 7 1526, the Council announced that “it is ordered that no one in our town, country, or domains, whether man, woman, or girl, shall baptize another; and if any one hereafter shall baptise another, he will be seized by our lords and, according to the decree now set forth, will be drowned without, mercy.” From this one can argue that the Anabaptist’s separate theological view from Zwingli did not go in their
Hoffmann initiated adult baptism in Strasbourg in 1530 and died in prison in 1543 because of his apocalyptic preaching’s. Hoffman is an essential example who illustrates that the radicals caused their own defeat, despite claiming that he was the prophet Elijah and that the world would end in 1533 it failed to come true, this resulted in many of his followers losing faith. Although the Anabaptists were successful when they took power away from the bishop in the town of Münster, as Ulinka Rublack wrote “Anabaptists managed to create a ‘kingdom of the Last Day’s in the Westphalian city of Münster”, the replacement of law and order and the introduction of polygamy by Jan van Leiden had an impact on the Anabaptist movement. For example, “some 50 townsmen were killed or executed for resisting Jan’s vision of the New Jerusalem.” This exposes that the radical reformers movement failed in Münster because of their inability to create a city with better conditions, particularly since “food was running low and morale dropping.” Consequently, on “25 June 1535 the city was taken by storm after the keepers of one of the gates betrayed it.” As Alastair Armstrong argues, “Anabaptists never really recovered from such a blow, and the movement split into several