Tag Archives: Radical Reformation

New Research on Early Modern Religious Radicalism: A Report from the 2019 SCSC

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From October 17-20, the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference held its annual meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Over the past several years, the so-called Radical Reformation has been a topic of considerable discussion at SCSC annual meetings, as scholars (chief among them Michael Driedger) have challenged the applicability of term, which suggests a more coherent and unified movement than actually existed in the sixteenth century and hews too closely to the descriptions promulgated by the radicals’ contemporary opponents.1 As such, scholars who write on individuals and groups on the margins of the Reformations have been forced to grapple with the labels they apply to their objects of study. While the terminology used remains in a state of flux, the study of religious radicals, whether Anabaptist, Anabaptist-adjacent, or wholly unconnected to Anabaptism, continues to generate considerable interest, as was evident at this year’s gathering.

The conference took place at the Hyatt Regency in downtown St. Louis, near the Arch and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

The Society for Reformation Research sponsored two panels on the subject. The first of these, entitled Mysticism, Dissent, and Rejection of the Ecclesiastical Order, included papers by Roy Vice (Wright State University), Christopher Martinuzzi (DePaul University), Marvin Anderson (University of Toronto), and Archie MacGregor (Marquette University). Vice’s paper, entitled “The Peasants’ War and the Jews,” examined the ways in which peasant revolutionaries—though their principal targets were their ecclesiastical overlords—also targeted Jews, particularly those who worked as moneylenders and pawnbrokers.2 Martinuzzi’s paper, entitled “Why Did Conrad Grebel Write to Thomas Müntzer in 1524?,” argued that Grebel’s letter appealed to a shared identity as a persecuted minority. Both Grebel and Müntzer saw the persecution they experienced as proof of their faithfulness.3 Anderson’s paper, entitled “‘Hidden Under a Bench:’ The Radicals’ Retrieval of the Inner Word à la Eckhartian and Taulerian Mysticism” revisited how Karlstadt and Müntzer appropriated the mystical notion of the Inner Word in contrast to Luther’s Outer Word, in light of Luther’s rhetorical lament about how the pure and Holy Word of God had been shoved and “hidden under a bench,” a charge he directed against the medieval church as well as Karlstadt and the Radicals.4 MacGregor’s paper, entitled “‘Take, Then, the Body of the Lord:’ the Unusual Liturgy and Theology of Thomas Müntzer,” examined Müntzer’s liturgy and argued that it demonstrated a conservative sacramental theology (particularly in its elevation of the Eucharist, which suggests that Müntzer may have retained belief in the Real Presence in some form).5

The second sponsored panel, entitled Constructions of Radicalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, included papers from Jonathan Trayner (University of Reading), Adam Bonikowske (University of Arizona), and Jessica Lowe (Vanderbilt University). Trayner’s paper, entitled “The Sword in the Ragged Sheath: The Motif of the Peasant Radical in Sixteenth-Century Prints,” examined how images of swords in damaged sheaths—emblematic of peasants—were used in early modern prints, in both positive and negative depictions connoting alternately sexuality, conflict, and deference.6 Bonikowske’s paper, entitled “Anabaptist Recanters: Masculine Identity and the Maintenance of Dishonor,” argued that the penalties imposed on Anabaptist men who recanted—such as inability to bear arms or do business, or visible marks of shame like placards or brands—were designed to insult their masculine honour.7 Lowe’s paper, entitled “Münster but not Münster: A Case of Property Dispossession and Anabaptist Contention in the 1550s,” examined a lawsuit brought by Heinrich auf dem Berg, field marshal of Essen and accused Anabaptist (a charge he now denied) against his sister and brother-in-law for appropriating his home during his imprisonment. Heinrich’s case was an unusual example—it was more the children of Anabaptists, rather than the accused Anabaptists themselves, who sued for the return of property.8

In addition to the two sponsored panels, several other panels featured individual papers of interest to scholars and enthusiasts of the phenomena formerly known as the Radical Reformation. At a roundtable entitled Rewriting Reformation Textbooks, Geoffrey Dipple (University of Alberta, Augustana) addressed the challenges of talking about radicalism in the Reformations in light of recent critiques of “The Radical Reformation” as a concept. In a panel on charity and poor relief, David Y. Neufeld (Conrad Grebel University College) gave a paper entitled “‘Under the Guise of Christian Charity:’ Anabaptist Responses to Poverty in Reformed Zurich, 1570-1650,” in which he described the voluntary systems of charity that Zurich’s Anabaptists developed in parallel with the Reformed State (which saw those systems as a threat and worked to dismantle them.9 Patrick Hayden-Roy (Nebraska Wesleyan University) gave a paper entitled “Everything Falls Apart: Sebastian Franck’s Vision of the Apocalypse” as part of a panel on Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe, in which he detailed Franck’s pessimistic view of human history. Franck saw human institutions as irredeemably evil, and the best hope of the faithful lay in quiet submission to this evil order of the world until God finally destroyed it all.10 Finally, in a panel on Trajectories of the European Reformation: Disputation, Biography, and Martyrdom, Jennifer Otto (University of Lethbridge) gave a paper entitled Ethics and Exhortation to Martyrdom, which compared the Church Fathers’ writings on martyrdom and Menno Simons’ writing on martyrdom in The Cross of the Saints. While Church Fathers such as Origen had urged caution, viewing martyrdom as the path of a chosen few, The Cross of the Saints presented the risk of martyrdom as the norm for all true Christians.11

Even as we struggle to find a new name for it, this is an exciting time for our subfield of Reformation history. The lives and beliefs of Anabaptists and others on the fringes of the Reformations in the sixteenth century continue to provide ample opportunities to ask new questions and pursue new avenues of research.

  1. Christina Moss, “Current Research on Early Modern Anabaptist and Spiritualist History: A Report from the 2016 SCSC,” Anabaptist Historians: Bringing the Anabaptist Past Into A Digital Century, published September 15, 2016, https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2016/09/15/current-research-on-early-modern-anabaptist-and-spiritualist-history-a-report-from-the-2016-scsc/; David Y. Neufeld, “New Approaches to the Radical Reformation: Report from the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference 2018,” Anabaptist Historians: Bringing the Anabaptist Past Into A Digital Century, published November 24, 2018, https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2018/11/24/new-approaches-to-the-radical-reformation-report-from-the-sixteenth-century-society-conference-2018/  ↩
  2. Roy Vice, “The Peasants’ War and the Jews” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  3. Christopher Martinuzzi, “Why Did Conrad Grebel Write to Thomas Müntzer in 1524?” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  4. Marvin Anderson, “‘Hidden Under a Bench:’ The Radicals’ Retrieval of the Inner Word à la Eckhartian and Taulerian Mysticism” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  5. Archie MacGregor, “‘Take, Then, the Body of the Lord:’ the Unusual Liturgy and Theology of Thomas Müntzer” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  6. Jonathan Trayner, “The Sword in the Ragged Sheath: The Motif of the Peasant Radical in Sixteenth-Century Prints” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  7. Adam Bonikowske, “Anabaptist Recanters: Masculine Identity and the Maintenance of Dishonor,” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  8. Jessica Lowe, “Münster but not Münster: A Case of Property Dispossession and Anabaptist Contention in the 1550s” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  9. David Y. Neufeld, “‘Under the Guise of Christian Charity:’ Anabaptist Responses to Poverty in Reformed Zurich, 1570-1650” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  10. Patrick Hayden-Roy, “Everything Falls Apart: Sebastian Franck’s Vision of the Apocalypse” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩
  11. Jennifer Otto, “Ethics and the Exhortation to Martyrdom” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 17-20, 2019).  ↩

Archive Spotlight: The Thomas A. and Katherine (Gingrich) Brady Collection

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This past semester I had the privilege of spending a few months looking through a new collection donated to the Mennonite Archives of Ontario, housed in the Milton Good Library at Conrad Grebel University College. The collection is a gift from Thomas A. Brady Jr. and Katherine Gingrich Brady. Thomas Brady, the Sather Professor Emeritus of History at UC Berkeley and his wife Katherine, an expert paleographer, have spent decades studying the history of the Reformation(s) in Strasbourg and Reformation-era politics more broadly.1 During that time, they gathered a wealth of early modern primary sources on microfilm, which they have now donated to Conrad Grebel University College. The collection promises to be a great resource for scholars interested in the late medieval/early modern history of Strasbourg and politics in the Reformation era.

The Grande-Ile, the heart of Strasbourg’s old town, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. Many of the buildings first erected in the medieval and early modern periods are still standing there today. Photo by the author.

The city of Strasbourg is of particular interest to scholars of early Anabaptist history, both for the number and diversity of Anabaptists it attracted and the relatively mild punishments Anabaptists and other religious dissenters faced there. While Strasbourg’s Anabaptists alone numbered as many as 2000 in 1530—a substantial minority of the city’s population—only two Reformation-era non-conformists received a death sentence from Strasbourg’s magistrates: Claus Frey, who practiced bigamy, and Thomas Salzmann, who called Christ an imposter.2 As the spiritualist chronicler Sebastian Franck put it, “he whom one hangs elsewhere, one drives out of Strasbourg with rods.”3 While some scholars have attributed Strasbourg’s relative tolerance for dissent to the irenicism of its reformers—and Martin Bucer, Wolfgang Capito, and Mathis Zell were certainly less quick to burn bridges than many of their contemporaries—Brady has argued convincingly that the primary impetus for toleration came from Strasbourg’s magistrates, who sought peace and order more than they sought conformity.4 While few of the documents in the collection deal directly with Anabaptists, the primary sources the Bradys donated shed light on the inner workings of Strasbourg politics and the history of the city leading up to and during the Reformation era, all of which helps to illuminate the context in which so many sixteenth-century Anabaptists managed to survive and even thrive to some extent.

The majority of the microfilms in the collection contain copies of documents housed in the Archives de la ville et de l’Eurométropole de Strasbourg (the Strasbourg municipal archives, which also house the Archives de St. Thomas, dedicated to Strasbourg church history), the Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin (the regional archives for the Lower Rhine), and the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg (the Strasbourg university library, which houses a substantial collection of premodern manuscripts and rare books). Other microfilms include copies of documents from a number of other European and North American libraries and archives, including the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, the Weimar Staatsarchiv, the Danish Royal Library, the Newberry Library, and the Harvard University Library. The contents of these documents include multiple late medieval and early modern chronicles of Strasbourg history, large amounts of sixteenth-century correspondence from Strasbourg’s Reformation-era political and religious leaders (including the entire Thesaurus Baumianus, a collection of nineteenth-century copies of the Strasbourg reformers’ correspondence), sixteenth-century notes from Strasbourg Senate meetings (particularly focused on the years of the Schmalkaldic War), and many other treasures. For scholars interested in Reformation-era religion and politics, the collection promises to yield the raw material for several fascinating projects.

  1. Among Professor Brady’s best-known books are Ruling Class, Regime, and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), Protestant Politics: Jacob Sturm (1489-1553) and the German Reformation (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1995), and German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).↩
  2. John David Derksen, From radicals to survivors: Strasbourg’s religious nonconformists over two generations, 1525-1570 (Goy-Houten, Netherlands: Hes & de Graaf Pub., 2002), 53; Camill Gerbert, Geschichte der Strassburger Sectenbewegung zur Zeit der Reformation, 1524-1534 (Strasbourg: Heitz & Mundel, 1889), ix. ↩
  3. Cited in Bodo Brinkman and Berthold Hinz, Hexenlust und Sündenfall: Die Seltsamen Phantasien des Hans Baldung Grien (Petersberg: Imhof, 2007), 181.↩
  4. Brady, Ruling Class, 247n43.↩

Early Modern Anabaptists: Syllabus Draft

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This fall I’m teaching HIST 348: The Radical Reformation at Conrad Grebel University College. Given how much I’ve benefited from other instructors’ pedagogical transparency, in this post I’m sharing an early draft of the syllabus. As I describe here, the status of the “Radical Reformation” as a recognizable historical phenomenon and framework for research is a matter of current discussion. I intend to involve students in this debate in class, but have decided to center the course itself on early modern Anabaptists and Anabaptism. The course is twelve weeks long, and students meet twice a week for eighty minutes. The content and structure of the course reflects my intent to help students both master the subject matter and engage in tasks of historical investigation and interpretation. I welcome comments and suggestions. 

Expected Learning Outcomes

At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to:

  • Identify questions that animate the scholarly study of early modern Anabaptism and pose their own
  • Assess the impact of context on the content of primary source evidence
  • Critically evaluate and compare the content of other historians’ written argumentation
  • Synthesize evidence from various sources of information about the past to produce a historical argument
  • Communicate original and persuasive historical interpretations in oral, written, and visual form

Assignments

Class Participation (15%)

Writing Assignments: Historiographical Workshops (20% each)

1. Secondary source scavenger hunt and analysis (1000 words)

Students will select two articles from the assigned essay collections (see course schedule below). They will identify the following elements related to the mechanics of scholarly writing: the author’s field and affiliation; the volume’s intended audience; the essay’s argument; the location and scope of the article’s literature review; and three pieces of primary source evidence. The analytical portion of their essay will address the authors’ approaches to the question of “radicality” in relation to their historical subjects. 

2. Primary source analysis (1000 words)

Students will select a pair of primary sources with a theological focus from distinct regions, time periods, or Anabaptist writers/groups (I will provide a list of source pairings). In their essays, students will (1) contextualize the sources, (2) describe their contents, and (3) formulate a conclusion about Anabaptist theological commonalities and differences, using chapter eight from Snyder (1997) as a framework for comparison.

3. Additional syllabus unit (3 pages)

Students will create an additional unit for the course syllabus, which includes a topic/theme, lecture/activity outlines, and reading(s). The scholarship on which this unit is based will have been published in the last ten years. Students will include a one-page reflection in which they explain their choices. 

Final: Timeline JS Assignment (25%)

Students will select a course topic (theme, theological position, or Anabaptist group or figure) and create a visual representation of 10-12 related historical developments using the open source tool Timeline JS. In addition, they will submit a three-page essay in which they explain the significance of the events they have selected and explore the interpretive implications of their work. The purpose of this summative exercise is to lead students to make an argument about the meaning of continuity and/or change over time in relation to the historical subject they have selected. 

Course Texts

  • C. Arnold Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology: Revised Student Edition (1997)
  • Other readings listed in course schedule below

Course Schedule

I. Origins

1. Introduction

  • Sept. 5 – Presentation of course themes

2. Context

  • Sept. 10 – Late Medieval European Religion
    • Reading: Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, chapters 1 and 2
  • Sept. 12 – The Reformation, 1517-1525
    • Reading: Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, chapter 3, 4, and 5

3. Polygenesis

  • Sept. 17 – Origin Stories: South
    • Reading: Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, chapter 6 and 7
  • Sept. 19 – Origin Stories: North
    • Reading: Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, chapter 11

4. Spread and Development

  • Sept. 24 – Persecution, Migration, and Missions
    • Reading: Martin Rothkegel, “Pilgram Marpeck and the Fellows of the Covenant: The Short and Fragmentary History of the Rise and Decline of an Anabaptist Denominational Network,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 85, no. 1 (2011): 7-36
  • Sept. 26 – Conversion
    • Reading: “Hans Fischer Responds to Questioning (1548),” in C. Arnold Snyder (ed.), Later Writings of the Swiss Anabaptists, 1529-1592 (2017), 57-67.

5. Historiographical Workshop #1: A “Radical Reformation”?

  • Oct. 1 – Definitions of Reformation Radicalism
    • Readings: student selections from Bridget Heal and Anorthe Kremers (eds.), Radicalism and Dissent in the World of Protestant Reform (2017) and James M. Stayer and John D. Roth (eds.), A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism (2007)
  • Oct. 3 – Conversation with Invited Guest

II. Anabaptist Religious Cultures

6. Authority and Gender

  • Oct. 8 – Scripture, Prophesy, and Communal Practice and Belief
    • Readings: “Margret Hottinger of Zollikon” and “Ursula Jost and Barbara Rebstock of Strasbourg,” in C. Arnold Snyder and Linda A. Huebert Hecht, Profiles of Anabaptist Women (1996), 43-53 and 273-87
  • Oct. 10 – Courtship and Marriage
    • Lyndal Roper, “Sexual Utopianism in the German Reformation,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42, no. 3 (1991): 394-418
  • Oct. 22 – Münster

7. Communication

  • Oct. 24 – Orality and the Written Word
    • Reading: Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, chapter 9 

8. Historiographical Workshop #2: “Anabaptist Theological Divergences and Commonalities”

  • Oct. 29 – A Common Anabaptist Theological Core?
    • Readings: Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, chapter 8; selected primary source pairings
  • Oct. 31 – Conversation with Invited Guest

9. Anabaptist Minorities in Conflict and Coexistence

  • Nov. 5 – Swiss Brethren
    • Reading: “Strasbourg Discipline,” in Snyder (ed.), Later Writings, 92-99
  • Nov. 7 – Dutch Mennonites
    • Reading: Piet Visser, “Mennonites and Doopsgezinden in the Netherlands, 1535-1700,” in Stayer and Roth, 299-345

10. Identity Formation

  • Nov. 12 – Hymns and Martyr Stories
    • Readings: Ausbund, number 17; Erin Lambert, “Friction in the Archives: Storytelling in Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 41, no. 2 (2018): 113-138
  • Nov. 14 – Transnational Disputes and Convergences
    • Reading: Troy Osborne,  “The Development of a Transnational ‘Mennonite’ Identity among Swiss Brethren and Dutch Doopsgezinden in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 88, no. 2 (2014): 195-218

III. Continuing Anabaptist Traditions

11. Historiographical Workshop #3: “New Directions”

  • Nov. 19 – A Short Historiography of Anabaptism
    • Reading: Snyder, Anabaptist History and Theology, appendix
  • Nov. 21 – New Approaches
    • Readings: Mathilde Monge, “Research Note: Who Is in the ‘Society of Christian Brothers’? Anabaptist Identity in Sixteenth-Century Cologne,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 82, no. 3 (2008): 603-614; Kat Hill, Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief in Reformation Germany: Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525-1585 (2015), chapters 5 and 6

12. Continuing Anabaptist Tradition

  • Nov. 26 – Genealogies: Visit to “Growing Family” Exhibition at the Mennonite Archives of Ontario, Conrad Grebel University College
  • Nov. 28 – Global Anabaptisms
    • Reading: Felipe Hinojosa, Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture (2014), chapter 5

Call for Papers: Word, Spirit, and the Renewal of the Church

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believerschurchconfwordspiritrenewalposter

In the fall of 1517, Martin Luther’s challenge to the authority of the papacy and church tradition—along with his appeal to Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone)—inspired various reformers to read scripture and to understand the liberating power of the Holy Spirit in new ways. But what started as a renewal movement within the Catholic Church soon led to a host of divisions, giving rise to Protestant, Anabaptist, and other traditions, including those groups known as the Believers’ Church. Among the latter, the deep debts to the renewal impulses of late medieval Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation are unmistakable. In the 500 years since then, the church—including the Believers’ Church movement—has further expanded globally in a great diversity of forms.

This conference seeks to explore the gifts and tensions of the Reformation legacy for the Believers’ Church tradition, with a view toward its ecumenical and global dimensions. The gathering will focus especially on the debates that have swirled around the themes of Biblical authority, the movement of the Spirit, and the renewal of the church.

The conference theme “Word, Spirit, and the Renewal of the Church” can encompass a wide range of disciplines, approaches, and topics. We seek proposals from theologians, biblical scholars, ethicists, historians, pastors, and graduate students that address how the debates of the sixteenth century continue to find expression in contemporary understandings of Word, Spirit, and the renewal of the church. We are especially interested in papers that bring voices from the Believers’ Church into conversation with other Christian traditions.

Possible questions and topics to address include:

  • How does a given understanding of Word and Spirit, and their relation to each other, interact with another doctrine (e.g., creation, Christology, ecclesiology, etc.)?
  • What are some of the theological and sociological dynamics of past and present renewal movements within the Believers’ Church tradition?
  • How do groups in the Believers’ Church tradition interpret the Bible and its authority vis-à-vis other Christian traditions?
  • How has the Reformation called into question the location of the church: where/who is the church today?
  • What are some of the key issues facing comparative theologies, ethics, and practices of grace, discipleship, tradition, enculturation, church unity and renewal, worship and preaching, etc.?
  • How are the central issues of the Reformation relevant to the Believers’ Church, especially in its global dimension?

Presentations should reflect a thoughtful engagement with scholarship but be accessible to a broad audience, including interested lay people. A limited number of travel grants will be available, with highest priority going to presenters coming from the Global South and students.

Please submit a one-page CV and a 250-word abstract for a paper or a complete panel/workshop session (with presenters indicated) by April 1, 2017 to John D. Roth (johndr@goshen.edu). Conference organizers will respond by May 1, 2017.

Current Research on Early Modern Anabaptist and Spiritualist History: A Report from the 2016 SCSC

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Bruges.jpg

Every year, scholars of the European Reformations gather to present papers at the annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. The most recent annual conference was held in Bruges, Belgium, with over 1000 scholars in attendance. As it did at the 2015 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Society for Reformation Research sponsored three panels on the Radical Reformation, and the papers presented at these panels showcased exciting new research on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anabaptist and Spiritualist topics and challenged established historiographical norms and categories.

The first panel, entitled New Approaches to the Radical Reformation, featured papers from James Stayer, Mary Sprunger, and me. I opened the panel by presenting a paper on Melchior Hoffman and the prophecies of Lienhard and Ursula Jost. The paper detailed the North German/Dutch Anabaptist founding father’s reverence for contemporary prophecy as equal in value to biblical prophecy and his approach to prophecy both scriptural and contemporary, which served to bolster his own authority in Melchiorite circles as its ultimate interpreter.1 James Stayer, professor emeritus at Queen’s University, presented a paper on The Blasphemy of Jan van Leiden, a work which first appeared in print in 1627 and was attributed to Menno Simons. Stayer outlined the controversy between Willem de Bakker and Helmut Isaak (both of whom accept Menno’s authorship) on the date the work was first written and suggested that the document was a forgery, as Christiaan Sepp had argued in the nineteenth century.2 Mary Sprunger of Eastern Mennonite University closed out the panel with a paper on the migration of Flemish (in the geographic rather than religious sense) Mennonites to Amsterdam following increased religious persecution in the Spanish Netherlands and their economic impact on Dutch Mennonite and Doopsgezind congregations, particularly in the area of trade.3

The second panel, entitled Religious and Social Radicalism in the Early Years of the Reformation, featured presentations from Geoffrey Dipple, Emese Bálint, and Roy Vice. Dipple, of the University of Alberta, revisited the question of who baptized South German Anabaptist founder Hans Denck. Dipple argued that Denck’s focus was far less on baptism than on the Lord’s Supper, and that if he himself was baptized at all, he was not baptized in Switzerland. Rather, as the polygenesis paradigm suggests, Denck’s form of Anabaptism was distinct from that of the Swiss Brethren.4 Bálint, of the European University Institute, presented a paper coauthored with Christopher Martinuzzi of the Scuola Normale Superiore on exchanges between Anabaptists and Saxon reformers in the early years of the reformation. The paper emphasized the widespread exchange of ideas in the early years of the Reformation and the fluid nature of religious identity, calling into question the divide between magisterial and Radical Reformations and arguing that given the multiplicity of influences that shaped every surviving sixteenth-century creed, the religions that began in the sixteenth century are best understood as composite religions.5 Roy Vice presented a third paper on the mockery of the sacred in the Peasants’ War. He particularly detailed the peasants’ frequent desecration of consecrated hosts, an action that evinced both anticlericalism and a denial of the Real Presence.6

The final panel, entitled Spiritualist Currents in the Radical Reformation and Their Long-term Impact, featured papers from Theo Brok, Gary Waite, and Michael Driedger. Theo Brok, of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, presented a paper on Anabaptism in the Lower Rhine from its origins to the 1550s. Brok maintained that the region developed a unique form of Anabaptism influenced by Johannes Campanus and a network of bishops unconnected to Menno Simons and Dirk Philips.7 Gary Waite, of the University of New Brunswick, gave a paper on the long-term impact of the Spiritualist hermeneutic, in which he traced relationships between Amsterdam’s seventeenth-century religious dissenters and argued that the Spiritualist emphasis on the inner word and distaste for dogmatism paved the way for a historical-critical approach to Scriptural revelation adopted by figures such as Baruch Spinoza.8 The panel’s final presenter, Michael Driedger of Brock University, challenged the very category of Radical Reformation, which had served as an organizing principle for this series of panels. Driedger argued that the idea of an essential unity between Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and other dissenters was an idea propagated not by members of these groups themselves, but rather in polemical literature written by their opponents.9

The complicated and interconnected currents of sixteenth-century religious thought continue to resist simple categorization, whether by academics seeking to present historical material in an accessible fashion or by religious groups seeking a neat and tidy origin story. Ongoing research on Anabaptists and other marginal sixteenth-century religious figures reveals both important distinctions between individuals and groups and the exchange of ideas both within and beyond confessional and sectarian boundaries. For those of us, Anabaptist or otherwise, who belong to a religious tradition, these findings offer an opportunity to reflect on the complicated and multifaceted nature of religious identity. Our forebears may not be our ideological twins, but nevertheless we, like them, are shaped not only by our upbringing—both the parts we reject and the parts we accept—but by the people and ideas we interact with over the course of our lives.

 

Works Cited

Bálint, Emese  and Christopher Martinuzzi. “Composite Religions: Encounters Between Early Saxon Reformers and the First Anabaptists.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

Brok, Theo. “Johannes Campanus (ca. 1500–1575) and Early Anabaptism in the Lower Rhine.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

Dipple, Geoffrey. “Who Baptized Hans Denck?” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

Driedger, Michael. “The Origins of the Radical Reformation in the Republic of Hateful Letters.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

Moss, Christina. “‘Worth as Much as Jeremiah and Isaiah’: Melchior Hoffman and the Prophecies of Lienhard and Ursula Jost.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

Sprunger, Mary. “The Impact of Flemish Mennonite Migration to Amsterdam in the Late Sixteenth Century and Early Seventeenth Century” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016).

Stayer, James. “‘The Blasphemy of Jan van Leiden’ (1627) by Menno Simons?” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

Vice, Roy. “Mocking the Sacred During the German Peasants’ War.” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

Waite, Gary. “The Spiritualist Hermeneutic and Its Long-Term Impact: From David Joris to Baruch Spinoza?” Paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

  1. Christina Moss, “‘Worth as Much as Jeremiah and Isaiah’: Melchior Hoffman and the Prophecies of Lienhard and Ursula Jost” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩
  2. James Stayer, “‘The Blasphemy of Jan van Leiden’ (1627) by Menno Simons?” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩
  3. Mary Sprunger, “The Impact of Flemish Mennonite Migration to Amsterdam in the Late Sixteenth Century and Early Seventeenth Century” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩
  4. Geoffrey Dipple, “Who Baptized Hans Denck?” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩
  5. Emese Bálint and Christopher Martinuzzi, “Composite Religions: Encounters Between Early Saxon Reformers and the First Anabaptists” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩
  6. Roy Vice, “Mocking the Sacred During the German Peasants’ War” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩
  7. Theo Brok, “Johannes Campanus (ca. 1500–1575) and Early Anabaptism in the Lower Rhine” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩
  8. Gary Waite, “The Spiritualist Hermeneutic and Its Long-Term Impact: From David Joris to Baruch Spinoza?” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). This paper is related to an ongoing research project on religious dissent in England and the Low Countries entitled Amsterdamnified and helmed by Waite and Michael Driedger. See more at http://amsterdamnified.dutchdissenters.net/wp/) ↩
  9. Michael Driedger, “The Origins of the Radical Reformation in the Republic of Hateful Letters” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016). ↩