The First Anabaptists

In September 1524 Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz and four companions at Zurich wrote to Thomas Müntzer. They wanted the Lord’s Supper kept with ordinary bread and the words of Scripture only, called the baptism of infants senseless and contrary to all Scripture, and held that the gospel and those who follow it are not to be protected with the sword (Grebel, Letter to Müntzer 5 September 1524).

The council of Zurich held a disputation and on 18 January 1525 ordered all unbaptised children to be baptised within a week, on pain of banishment. On 21 January it forbade Grebel and Manz to dispute further and expelled four of their associates (Zurich council records mandates of 18 and 21 January 1525 (Egli nos. 621–624; Kidd no. 211, pp. 453–454)).

The chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, written later, tells what the group did. Grebel, Manz and George Blaurock, a priest from Chur, were together with others. After prayer Blaurock stood up and asked Grebel to baptise him with true Christian baptism on his faith; Grebel did so, there being no ordained minister for such a work; and the others then asked Blaurock to baptise them (Hutterite Chronicle pp. 34–35). Within three weeks the council was questioning villagers of Zollikon whom Manz and Blaurock had baptised (Zurich council records hearing of early February 1525 (Egli no. 636; Kidd no. 212, p. 454)).

On 7 March 1526 the council decreed that anyone who baptised another would be “drowned without mercy” (Zurich council records mandate of 7 March 1526 (Egli no. 936; Kidd no. 213, p. 455)). Huldrych Zwingli reported the decision to a friend that day. He would not have wished reborn Christianity to begin with such examples, he wrote, but God had once struck down Ananias to forestall greater evils (Zwingli, Letters, to Vadian, 7 March 1526 (Kidd no. 213, pp. 455–456)). On 5 January 1527 the court sentenced Manz, who had baptised again after swearing to stop, to be bound, taken out in a boat and thrown into the water to die (Zurich council records sentence of 5 January 1527 (Egli no. 1109, pp. 529–530)). The same day Blaurock was whipped through the city and banished, on pain of drowning if he returned (Zurich council records sentence of 5 January 1527 (Egli no. 1110, pp. 530–531)).

On 24 February 1527 a meeting at Schleitheim agreed seven articles. Baptism is for those who have learned repentance and believe, which excludes all infant baptism. The sword is ordained by God outside the “perfection of Christ” and belongs to the worldly magistrates; within that perfection only the ban is used. Christians are not to swear at all (Schleitheim Confession articles 1, 6 and 7 and closing date, with the editors’ abstract). Their drafting is attributed to Michael Sattler (Schleitheim Confession articles 1, 6 and 7 and closing date, with the editors’ abstract). That May he was tried on charges brought in the name of the emperor’s governor: breaking the imperial mandate, denying that the body and blood of Christ are present in the sacrament, rejecting infant baptism and oaths, and saying that the Turks should not be resisted. His tongue was cut out, his body was torn with hot tongs and he was burned; his wife was drowned a few days later (Martyrs Mirror pp. 416–418). Blaurock was burned near Klausen in Tyrol in 1529 (Martyrs Mirror p. 430).

The other reformers rejected this teaching: at Marburg in 1529 Luther and Zwingli signed together that infant baptism is right and that a Christian may hold civil authority (Marburg Articles articles 12 and 14).