Felix Manz
One of the first Anabaptists at Zurich. He went on baptising after the council forbade it and was drowned by sentence of the city’s court on 5 January 1527.
Manz signed the letter of September 1524 with Conrad Grebel (Grebel, Letter to Müntzer signatures). A witness told the council of Zurich in February 1525 that Manz had baptised two men in a house at Zollikon (Zurich council records hearing of early February 1525 (Egli no. 636; Kidd no. 212, p. 454)).
The sentence of 5 January 1527 calls him a chief beginner of rebaptism. It says that he had been shown from Scripture that infant baptism is right, had been released on oath, and had then baptised a woman; that he taught that no Christian may be a magistrate or punish with the sword; and that he and his followers had separated from the Christian community and set up a sect. He was to be bound, taken out in a boat and thrown into the water, and his property went to the city (Zurich council records sentence of 5 January 1527 (Egli no. 1109, pp. 529–530)). The Martyrs Mirror preserves an exhortation attributed to him and places his death in 1526 (Martyrs Mirror p. 415). 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.