The Radical Reformation
- When
- 1525 AD
- Where
- Zurich
- Kind
- Reform
Anabaptists rejected infant baptism and state churches, and were persecuted by every established party.
In January 1525 a group in Zurich who had decided the city's reformation was moving too slowly and conceding too much to the magistrates baptised one another as adults, in defiance of a council order. They held that a church should consist of those who had chosen it, and therefore could not be coextensive with the city. Zurich drowned Felix Manz in the Limmat two years later. What followed was persecution by Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic authorities alike, and the Munster rebellion of 1534 — an apocalyptic seizure of a city by one wing of the movement — was used to justify all of it. The Schleitheim articles of 1527 and Menno Simons' work after 1536 gave the surviving majority its settled, non-violent shape.
Bodies it bears on
Began here
Who stands here
- Huldrych Zwingli
1484–1531
His own radicals broke with him over infant baptism
- Menno Simons
1496–1561
Gave the scattered movement its settled, non-violent shape
- Conrad Grebel
c. 1498–1526
Performed the first believers' baptism, in January 1525
- Jakob Hutter
c. 1500–1536
Organised the survivors in Moravia into communities of goods
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.