Conrad Grebel
Zurich man of noble family who broke with Zwingli over infant baptism. The Hutterite chronicle says that he gave the first adult baptism, to George Blaurock; the council’s records place it early in 1525.
Grebel’s name stands first under the letter that he and his friends sent from Zurich to Thomas Müntzer in September 1524. It rejects infant baptism and the use of the sword in defence of the gospel, and in it Grebel says that he means to write against infant baptism himself (Grebel, Letter to Müntzer 5 September 1524). On 21 January 1525 the council ordered him and Felix Manz to stop disputing and to accept its decision (Zurich council records mandate of 21 January 1525 (Egli no. 624; Kidd no. 211, pp. 453–454)).
The chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren calls him a man of noble family, learned in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and says that when George Blaurock asked him for baptism he gave it, there being no ordained minister to do so (Hutterite Chronicle pp. 34–35). See the First Anabaptists.
In the timeline
- 21 January 1525, firm dateThe First Anabaptists
In January 1525 former followers of Zwingli at Zurich begin to baptise adults on confession of faith. The council answers with banishment and, from 1526, with death by drowning; Felix Manz is drowned in 1527. The Schleitheim articles of that year state what they believed.