Chapter 65. Zurich, Geneva and the Radicals: Zwingli, Calvin, Servetus and the Anabaptists

The Lutheran settlement described in the previous chapter was only one current of the Reformation. Two others ran beside it. The Reformed churches of the Swiss city-republics, led first by Zwingli in Zurich and then by Calvin in Geneva, carried the attack on Rome further in doctrine and discipline. The “Radical Reformation” rejected infant baptism and in some forms rejected property, magistracy and the existing order of the world. The library’s sources range from neutral chronology to William Bernstein’s mass-psychology narrative, a reception essay on Müntzer, Benazzi and D’Amico’s reconstruction of the Servetus trial, and the Hunt-White quarrel over Calvinism.

Zurich: Zwingli, Grebel and the first rebaptisms

Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) became people’s priest at the Grossmünster in Zurich in 1519. He attacked the Lenten fast in 1522, replaced the Mass with a new communion liturgy in 1525, and “clashed with the Anabaptists, which resulted in their persecution”. Historians, the reference article notes, still debate whether he made Zurich a theocracy [Wikipedia: Huldrych Zwingli]. The Encyclopedia of World History gives the decisive moment: “In January 1525, Zwingli and Grebel held a disputation in Zürich to debate Baptism, with Zwingli prevailing,” and “In the coming years, many Anabaptists were executed as heretics for their beliefs.” In 1527 the Swiss Brethren met at Schleitheim and adopted the Schleitheim Confession [Social, Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, “Anabaptism”].

Bernstein tells the same story from the side of the dissenters. Zwingli won the council disputations, but his opponent Conrad Grebel, a merchant, “opposed infant baptism—’child washing,’ as his theological descendants would later disparage it.” After the disputation Grebel rebaptised George Blaurock, and the two began baptising other adults. Zwingli at first said that little separated him from Grebel except “unimportant outward things, such as these, whether infants or adults should be baptized and whether a Christian may be a magistrate” [Bernstein, The Delusions of Crowds, #73904, ch. 2]. Felix Manz, co-founder of the Swiss Brethren, was executed at Zurich in 1527 [Wikipedia: Felix Manz].

Müntzer: fanatic or theologian?

The Encyclopedia of World History links the two radical milieux: “The men from Zwickau were connected to a former resident of Zwickau, Thomas Müntzer, a key figure in the Peasants’ War of 1524–25” [Social, Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, “Anabaptism”]. Bernstein records that Luther recommended Müntzer for a post at Zwickau in 1520; there Müntzer called Catholic clergy “monstrosities” and “flesh-tearing harpies” and preached “that salvation could be had with direct communication with God, independent of scripture”. He may have come under the influence of the “Zwickau prophets”, laymen who believed in “the importance of dreams and the irrelevance of holy writ for salvation” [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 1].

The turning point was the Allstedt sermon of 1524 before Duke Johann of Saxony, on Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2. According to Bernstein, Müntzer told the duke that the Church of Rome and its noble supporters had taken the place of Daniel’s doomed kingdom. He “declared himself the new Daniel, and that his followers, ‘the elect,’… were present not merely to observe, but to actively bring it about” [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 1]. At Frankenhausen on 14 May 1525, where he promised to catch bullets “in the sleeve of his coat”, some six thousand rebels died, and Müntzer was captured and beheaded [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 1].

The essay on Müntzer in The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception reads the same sermon differently. Müntzer argued that Paul’s description of rulers “not bearing the sword in vain, for they are the servants of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13) “should be interpreted as an obligation to root out the wicked who are opposed to the ways of ‘the New Daniel,'” and he refused to let princes plead that judgment belonged to God alone. His order of knowledge was “first experience, then Scripture”. It acknowledges that “Muentzer’s reputation is that of the dangerous fanatic whose resorting to violence drew upon himself and his companions a horrible retribution,” but adds that his “extraordinary theology, with its subtle interplay between personal transformation and identification with the suffering of Christ on the one hand and the outer transformation in the world on the other,” is now “more widely recognized” [Collins & Flint (eds.), The Book of Daniel: Composition and Reception, #79961, reception essay on Müntzer].

Münster, 1534-1535: the New Jerusalem

Bernstein’s chapter “Believers and Rogues” is the library’s fullest account of Münster. He presents it as “one of history’s most tumultuous mass delusions” and draws on two eyewitnesses, the Catholic Hermann von Kerssenbrock and the Anabaptist convert Heinrich Gresbeck [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 2]. Two “fuses” met there. One was Melchior Hoffman’s apocalyptic Anabaptism in the Low Countries, which dated the End to 1533. The other was the preaching of Bernard Rothmann, who passed from Lutheranism to Anabaptism. Rothmann’s pamphlets were printed with the money of the cloth merchant Bernard Knipperdolling, and they condemned private property: “God had made all things common, as today we can still enjoy air, fire, rain, and the sun in common, and whatever else some thieving man cannot grasp for himself” [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 2].

In the Low Countries the baker Jan Matthys, who styled himself Enoch, rebaptised Jan Bockelson of Leiden. Matthys arrived in Münster on 9 February 1534. After winning the council election of 23 February, the Anabaptists offered non-members rebaptism or expulsion, forbade private property and burned debt ledgers and books, “Luther’s along with Aquinas’s”. Matthys rode out at Easter 1534 and was killed and dismembered by the besiegers. Bockelson took his widow, Diewer, and his place [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 2]. “In July, Bockelson declared all previous marriages invalid and ordered all adults to remarry. Women now outnumbered men by almost three to one… and so the Anabaptists encouraged polygamy.” Gresbeck recorded the slogan “The more wives they had, the better Christians they were.” Resisting wives were imprisoned and “not a few” beheaded. When about 120 men rose against the marriage law, Bockelson had 47 of them killed [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 2].

After a second siege assault failed, a lame goldsmith-prophet, Jan Dusentschuer, announced that God had anointed Bockelson king. Bockelson abolished the council, dressed in velvet and gold, and after a staged mock exodus on 31 October 1534 sent 27 “messengers” to nearby towns, and all but one were executed. The survivor, Heinrich Graess, changed sides and left the town a letter: “All the business that’s now being conducted in Münster is a fraud… it’s clearly contrary to God and His Holy Word” [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 2]. The city starved. On the night of 22 June 1535 Gresbeck and “Little Hans of Longstreet” let the besiegers in, and about six hundred residents were killed. On 22 January 1536 Bockelson, Knipperdolling and Krechtinck were torn with glowing tongs and hung in iron cages from St Lambert’s tower. Adult baptism, Bernstein concludes, survives “mainly among the Amish and Mennonites, both quiet and peaceable sects” [Bernstein, #73904, ch. 2].

Geneva: Calvin, the Anabaptists and predestination

Ellerbe quotes Calvin on the “eternal principle, by which [God] has determined what He will do with each man. For He does not create them equal, but appoints some to eternal life, and others to eternal damnation.” She describes his Geneva as “a powerfully repressive, police-state theocracy… perhaps best remembered for burning the well-known physician, Michael Servetus” [Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History, #6699, ch. 7, n. 14]. Dave Hunt, a non-Calvinist evangelical, attacks Calvin over baptism. He writes that “Calvin trusted in his baptism as proof that he was one of the elect” and quotes the Institutes against the Anabaptists: “Such in the present day are our Catabaptists, who deny that we are duly baptised, because we were baptised in the Papacy by wicked men and idolaters; hence they furiously insist on anabaptism” [Hunt & White, Debating Calvinism, #74605, Part II, ch. 8]. Calvin, Hunt adds, rejected “the Anabaptists he banished from Geneva”, and Calvinists and Lutherans “joined Rome in persecuting, burning, and drowning them” [Hunt & White, #74605, Part II, ch. 8]. He also quotes Calvin’s defence of Geneva: “Nothing is done here by the rashness of man, but all in obedience to the authority of God”.

The book is a formal debate on the five points of Calvinism, the TULIP scheme of total depravity (“man’s inability”), unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints, and each chapter has a response, a defence and final remarks [Hunt & White, #74605, contents]. James White, defending the Reformed position, replies that he has presented “a positive, exegetically based position, while Mr. Hunt has focused upon negatively attacking Calvin and ‘Calvinism’ without providing any kind of substantive defense of the position he assumes to be true,” and calls for a return to the text: “To the word and to the testimony (Isaiah 8:20)!” [Hunt & White, #74605, Part II, White’s response].

Servetus, 1553

Hunt states that infant baptism “was one of the two charges for which Michael Servetus (prosecuted by Calvin the lawyer) was burned at the stake,” and that “Calvin accused Servetus of ‘specious arguments’ against infant baptism” [Hunt & White, #74605, Part II, ch. 8]. Benazzi and D’Amico’s Romanian-translated Black Book of the Inquisition reconstructs the case in detail. After his arrest and escape at Vienne, Servetus lived “for months, as a fugitive, a life full of hardship: he had lost all his goods; he had to hide”. He then made for “Geneva, dominated by the severe figure of Calvin” (dominată de figura severă a lui Calvin). He was recognised there on 13 August; on 17 August Calvin personally took on the accusation before the Council, which framed the trial around 38 propositions extracted from his works [Benazzi & D’Amico, Cartea neagră a Inchiziției, #18380, Servetus chapter]. The authors weigh why he chose “the most dangerous place for him”. One explanation links the journey to the struggle between Calvin and the party of the so-called “liberals”. They prefer “a last hypothesis, the most fascinating but also the most plausible: Servetus goes to Geneva fully aware that he is heading toward his martyrdom,” a descent into “a modern Jerusalem” where he knew death awaited him [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, Servetus chapter]. The sentence quoted from Calvin’s works condemned him to “burn together with your books until you become ashes” [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, citing Calvin, Opera VIII, 829]. He died at Geneva on 27 October 1553 [Wikipedia: Michael Servetus].

Politics: city-republics, Kappel, and Locke’s Calvinism

The Reformed movement belonged to self-governing cities, not to princes. Zwingli built an alliance of Reformed cantons that split the Confederation along religious lines. After a war was narrowly avoided in 1529, the alliance imposed a food blockade on the Catholic cantons in 1531, and they attacked while Zurich was unprepared. Zwingli died on the battlefield at Kappel on 11 October 1531 [Wikipedia: Huldrych Zwingli]. Heisman traces the longer political inheritance of Calvinism. John Locke, “often… considered the single most important political philosopher behind the ideas of the American Revolution,” was “raised as a Puritan and his father served against the Royalists in the English Civil War”. Heisman adds that “The Cambridge Professor of Political Theory John Dunn concluded that he was a basically a Calvinist” [Heisman, suicide note, #38252, part 569]. In Heisman’s reading this links Geneva to liberal political theory, a line taken up in Chapter 66.

Key points

• The Encyclopedia of World History records the January 1525 Zurich disputation, which Zwingli won against Grebel, the later execution of many Anabaptists as heretics, and the Schleitheim Confession of 1527.
• Müntzer’s Allstedt sermon (1524) on Daniel 2 cast him as “the new Daniel”. Bernstein sees apocalyptic delusion ending at Frankenhausen, while the Daniel reception essay credits his “extraordinary theology” and reads Romans 13 as his mandate to “root out the wicked”.
• Bernstein’s Münster narrative covers Rothmann’s communism of goods, financed by Knipperdolling, the Matthys-Bockelson succession, the July 1534 polygamy decree, Dusentschuer’s anointing of a king, Graess’s “fraud” letter and the city’s fall in June 1535.
• Hunt quotes Calvin against the “Catabaptists”, says he banished Anabaptists from Geneva and relied on his infant baptism as proof of election. White answers that Hunt attacks Calvin’s person rather than the exegesis.
• Benazzi and D’Amico judge that Servetus most plausibly went to Geneva knowingly toward martyrdom. Calvin personally led the accusation, and Servetus was burned on 27 October 1553.
• The Reformed Reformation was a movement of city-republics; Zwingli died at Kappel in 1531 in a confessional war between cantons.
• Heisman, citing John Dunn, calls Locke “basically a Calvinist” and so links Geneva’s theology to Anglo-American liberalism.