In addition, the persuasive impact of Martin Luther’s encouragement for the princes to stamp out Christian radicals in the Empire could have contributed to a clarification of contrast between the Anabaptists as radical Protestants and Lutherans as magisterial Protestants who would not threaten the position of the princes. In the tract in response to the 1524 German peasant revolts, “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants”, which was published on the 10th of May, 1525, Luther pushes for authorities to “smite, slay and stab [the rebels], remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel”. The following Battle of Frankenhausen on the 15th of May, 1525, between the combined forces of George, Duke of Saxony, Philip of Hesse and Frederick III, Elector of Saxony against some 8,000 peasants led by the radical preacher Thomas Müntzer is considered the final act of the revolts with the peasants suffering a crushing defeat and the subsequent execution of Müntzer. Taking Müntzer’s espousal of Anabaptist doctrine into account, the end of the German Peasant’s War can also be considered a severe blow for Anabaptism in 16th-century Europe. These examples state that the downfall of the 16th-century Anabaptist movement was not just due to a lack of support from the Holy Roman princes, but also to their active persecution of the movement.
However, the shortcomings of the Anabaptist movement may not entirely be the result of state persecution; many of them could be connected to antagonism from the general populace of the Holy Roman Empire and even the fragility of the movement itself. At the same time as the Swiss Brethren found themselves expelled from Zurich, a number of Anabaptist sects centred around certain individuals sprang up in the cities of southern Germany, however these sectaries were also ultimately forced into exile; such was the case of the Müntzerite scholar Johann Denck, who was expelled from the cities of Nuremberg, Strasbourg and Worms due to publicly preaching against infant baptism. With the lack of a central spiritual leader, the German Anabaptist movement was fated to become nothing more than “a hotchpotch of sects and wandering bands who had very little in common”, according to RJ Tarr in 2001’s History Review. Even the “Martyrs’ Synod” of Augsburg in August 1527 only brought together some sixty Anabaptists and still failed to properly and coherently organize the movement in such a way as to avoid further persecution.
This organizational weakness and fragmentation of Anabaptism across the Holy Roman Empire most likely contributed greatly to the growing unfriendliness of the Empire’s population towards the movement in the late 1520s in the form of black legends and condemnation by Lutherans. Considering the absence of any large groups of Anabaptist both in urban and rural communities, along with the terrible reputation for violence that Anabaptists were burdened with after the Peasants War, the general immorality that the peasant population assumed of them made such shock stories like that of Anabaptists making love on an altar credible, for there was no substantial opposition to counter it. The vocal opposition of such prominent Lutherans as Philip Melanchton to the Anabaptists’ communitarian practices also served to emphasize the early “red scare”, further isolating the movement from mainstream religious and social thought.
In the society of today, the Anabaptist ideas of believer’s baptism, conscientious objection and the separation of church and state are not considered hugely radical among the more secular and liberal democracies of Western Europe. Looking back the 1520s, however, it is difficult to imagine Anabaptism receiving any support from the powers that be of a pious and autocratic monarchy such as the Holy Roman Empire. Although the unsteadiness and weak organisation of the 16th-century Anabaptist movement may have partly contributed to its failure to make an impact on Europe in the same way Lutheranism did, such weaknesses are simple to link with the persecution that the movement suffered (the lack of a strong leader being due to the constant exile of scholarly and influential Anabaptists, such as Johann Denck, from German cities, for example). With this in mind, it is my belief that the Radical Reformation indeed failed due to a lack of support from the Holy Roman princes. Furthermore, the deep-seated anti-authoritarianism that made up most of the Anabaptist ideology makes it very hard for there to have been a plausible situation where the Radicals would have had support from the princes, as their interests stood in direct conflict. Therefore, I do not believe it would be going too far to say that the movement was doomed from its beginnings.
Reformation Thought by Alister E. McGrath (Blackwell Publishing, 1999)
Aller des Heiligen Römischen Reichs gehaltene Reichstage, Abschiede und Satzungen (Mainz, 1666)
The European Reformation by Euan Cameron (Oxford University Press, 1991)
The European Reformation by Euan Cameron (Oxford University Press, 1991)
The European Reformation by Euan Cameron (Oxford University Press, 1991)
Article in History Review (2001) by R. J. Tarr
Years of Renewal: European History 1470-1600 by John Lotherington (Hodder and Stoughton, 1999)