ANABAPTISTS, a name given by their enemies to various sects which denied the validity of infant baptism and for other reasons became prominent in Germany and elsewhere during the period of the Reformation. (Gr. avaf3asrri cw, rebaptize.) So used, the word is too well known to be discarded, though it describes these sects by one of the least important of their distinctive doctrines and practices. The Anabaptists of Germany are his torically noteworthy, not because they insisted on rebaptism as a condition of admission to their community, but because the enthusiasm of the Reformation manifested itself in them in a form and manner altogether peculiar. Their views as to the true function of the church and its relation to the State, and the efforts which they made to realize these views, furnish a problem, partly theological, partly historical, of which a satisfactory solu tion is not easy. To one who looks merely at the extravagance and lawlessness which appear on the surface, fanaticism and madness, credulity and imposture may provide a sufficient expla nation of the whole Anabaptist movement, but a deeper insight will find elements in it which are quite inconsistent with such a sup position.
Anabaptism, as a system, may be described as the Reformation doctrine carried to its extreme limit ; the Anabaptists were the extreme left in the army of the Reformers. The hostility of the orthodox Reformers to them cannot conceal the fact that the most peculiar doctrines of the Anabaptists were to them only corollaries—illegitimately drawn, as the orthodox Reformers be lieved—from the fundamental principle common to both : the in dependence of the individual judgment, and the supreme im portance of the subjective element, personal faith, in religion. The connection of this principle with their theory of the church and its relation to the State, their doctrine of the sacraments, and even their political risings, is evident.
The history of the Anabaptist movement in its outward de velopment is brief but eventful. In 1521 their first rising took place at Zwickau, under the leadership of Thomas Miinzer, Lutheran pastor of that place. Compelled to leave Zwickau, Munzer visited Bohemia, resided two years at Alltstedt in Thuringia, and in 1524 spent some time in Switzerland. During this period he proclaimed his revolutionary doctrines in religion and politics with growing vehemence, and, so far as the lower orders were concerned, with growing success. The crisis came in the so-called Peasants' War in south Germany in 1525. In its origin a revolt against feudal oppression, it became, under the leadership of Munzer, a war against all constituted authorities, and an attempt to establish by force his ideal Christian com monwealth, with absolute equality and the community of goods. The total defeat of the insurgents at Frankenhausen (May 15 1525), followed as it was by the execution of Munzer and several other leaders, proved only a temporary check to the Anabaptist movement. Here and there throughout Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands there were zealous propagandists, through whose teaching many were prepared to follow as soon as another leader should arise. A second and more determined attempt to establish a theocracy was made at Munster, in Westphalia Here the sect had gained considerable influence, through the adhesion of Rothmann, the Lutheran pastor, and several prominent citizens; and the leaders, Johann Matthyszoon or Matthiesen, a baker of Haarlem, and Johann Bockholdt, a tailor of Leyden, had little difficulty in obtaining possession of the town and deposing the magistrates. Vigorous preparations were at once made, not only to hold what had been gained, but to proceed from Munster, as a centre to the conquest of the world. The town being besieged by Francis of Waldeck, its expelled bishop (April , Matthiesen, who was first in command, made a sally with only 3o followers, under the fanatical idea that he was a second Gideon, and was cut off with his entire band. Bock holdt, better known in history as John of Leyden, was now supreme. Giving himself out as the successor of David, he claimed royal honours and absolute power in the new "Zion." He justified the most arbitrary and extravagant measures by the authority of visions from heaven, as others have done in similar circumstances. With this pretended sanction he legalized poly gamy, and himself took four wives, one of whom he beheaded with his own hand in the market-place in a fit of frenzy. As a natural consequence of such licence, Munster was for 12 months a scene of unbridled profligacy. After an obstinate resistance the town was taken by the besiegers on June 24, 1535, and in January 1536, Bockholdt and some of his more prominent fol lowers, after being cruelly tortured, were executed in the market place. The outbreak at Munster was the crisis of the Anabaptist movement. It never again had the opportunity of assuming political importance, the civil powers naturally adopting the most stringent measures to suppress an agitation whose avowed object was to suppress them. It is difficult to trace the subsequent his tory of the sect as a religious body. The fact that after the Munster insurrection the very name Anabaptist was proscribed in Europe, is a source of twofold confusion. The enforced adop tion of new names makes it easy to lose the historical identity of many who really belonged to the Munster Anabaptists; but, on the other hand, has led to the classification of many with the Munster sect who had no connection with it. The latter mistake, it is to be noted, has been much more common than the former. The Mennonites, for example, have been identified with the earlier Anabaptists on the ground that they included among their number many of the fanatics of Munster. But the continuity of a sect is to be traced in its principles, and not in its adherents, and it must be remembered that Menno and his followers ex pressly repudiated the distinctive doctrines of the Munster Anabaptists. They have never aimed at any social or political revolution, and have been as remarkable for sobriety of conduct as the Munster sect was for its fanaticism (see MENNONITES). In English history frequent reference is made to the Anabaptists during the I6th and 17th centuries, but there is no evidence that any considerable number of native Englishmen ever adopted the principles of the Munster sect. Many of the followers of Munzer and Bockholdt seem to have fled from persecution in Germany and the Netherlands to be subjected to a persecution scarcely less severe in England. The excesses of John of Leyden, the Brigham Young of that age, cast an unjust stigma on the Baptists, of whom the vast majority were good, quiet people who merely carried out in practice the early Christian ideals of which their persecutors prated. Broadly speaking, the various branches of the Anabaptist movement held the following doctrines in common. (1) They taught that Jesus did not take the flesh r from his mother, but either brought his body from heaven or had one made for him by the Word. The Anabaptists were ac cused of denying the incarnation of Christ: they did, but not in the sense that he was not divine ; they rather denied him to be human. (2) They condemned oaths, and also the reference of disputes between believers to law-courts. (3) The believer must not bear arms or offer forcible resistance to wrongdoers, nor wield the sword. No Christian has the ius gladii. (4) Civil government belongs to the world, is Caesar. The believer who be longs to God's kingdom must not fill any office, nor hold any rank under government, which is to be passively obeyed. (5) Sinners or unfaithful ones are to be excommunicated and excluded from the sacraments and from intercourse with believers unless they repent, according to Matt. xviii. 15 seq., but no force is to be used towards them. Some sects calling themselves Spirituales, Pneumatici or Perfecti also held that the baptized, or regenerate man, cannot sin, a very ancient tenet : though the outward man sinned, the inward man sinned not.
One of the most notable features of the early Anabaptists is that they regarded any true religious reform as involving social amelioration. The Socialism of the 16th century was necessarily Christian and Anabaptist. Lutheranism was more attractive to grand-ducal patriots and well-to-do burghers than to the poor and oppressed and disinherited. The Lutherans and Zwinglians never converted the Anabaptists. Those who yielded to stress of persecution fell back into Roman Catholicism and went to swell the tide of the Catholic reaction.
See Beard, The Reformation in its relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert lectures, 1883) ; Lindsay, History of the Reforma tion (i9o7), vol. ii.; Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, art. "Anabaptism" with references given there; and the general church histories of the period.