4

Radicals

R. Emmet McLaughlin

Although the designation “Radical Reformation” first appeared in the book of the same name by George H. Williams in 1962, the historical category was created fifty years earlier when Ernst Troeltsch combined Max Weber’s ideal type of the “sect” with Alfred Hegler’s discovery of Spiritualism in Sebastian Franck (1499–1542).¹ Up to that point, Luther’s catchall term Schwärmer (fanatic) had promiscuously combined all Protestant reformers to Luther’s left, originally including Zwingli and other Sacramentarians, into a single movement of raving murder-prophets whose appeal to the spirit led inevitably to assaults on both true religion and legitimate authority. Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, generously contributed the Zurich Anabaptists by attributing their rise to the Saxon archprophet and executed leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, Thomas Müntzer, thereby conveniently moving the blame for Anabaptism far from Zurich and its first reformer. The Münsterite Kingdom, in any event, proved to Bullinger that Müntzer’s spirit inspired the Anabaptists despite their hypocritical meekness and pacifism.

Troeltsch’s threefold typology of Christian social forms—church, sect, and spiritualism—not only distinguished between sects like the Anabaptists and individualists like Franck, it also credited the sectarians and spiritualists with helping to create the modern world with its separation of church and state, religious toleration, and individual freedom of conscience. Putting the Schwärmer in the vanguard of progress and relegating Luther to the retrograde church and its medieval corpus christianorum predictably provoked outrage and response from Lutherans. The most important rebuttal, Karl Holl’s “Luther und die Schwärmer” reasserted the traditional view, but gave it theological and historical solidity. Medieval mysticism lay at the root of all the Schwärmer, and they were important in constructing an Anglo-Saxon modernity that Holl condemned as selfishly individualistic, greedy, and immoral.

Despite Holl, the conception of a legitimate, and perhaps more legitimate, movement of reform took hold, particularly in the United States where many of the groups descended from the Schwärmer had found refuge. A variety of names (e.g. “left wing of the Reformation,” or “stepchildren of the Reformation”) were proposed before George H. Williams coined the term “Radical Reformation.” The name had the virtue of ambiguity. Radical could mean that these reformers were simply more consistent or extreme forms of Lutheranism or Reformed Protestantism. It could also mean that they were socially or politically radical; for example, supporting revolutionary social change, or seeking to separate church and state, or arguing for complete religious freedom. This second meaning would not necessarily require the Radicals to be extreme forms of Protestantism. They could have derived directly from medieval or other sources. The question whether the Anabaptists or individual Radical Spiritualists were ever truly followers of Luther or Zwingli remains controverted because the heirs of the latter were not happy with the idea that the Radicals were more faithful to the Reformation principles or because those heirs still wish to dissociate the eccentricities and perversions of the Schwärmer from the socially responsible and religiously sensible Reformation with which they identified.

Williams’ Radical Reformation was fortunate in its timing. The 1960s and 1970s proved very congenial to any historical figures that were socially progressive, revolutionary, countercultural, or simply outrageous. For social historians, who were themselves trying to overcome entrenched ideological opposition to their goals and methods, the Radicals offered a chance to crack open sixteenth-century society to see what was happening beneath the surface both in the sense of accessing the lower classes and in the sense of laying bare social dynamics that were invisible to those who were driven by them. Because it was innovative and critical of their elders, young scholars were drawn to social history and hence, sometimes, to the Radicals. The field attracted some very talented young historians who would remain prominent for decades. Although, predictably, proponents criticized both the term and the underlying conceptual basis, they made the Radical Reformation an accepted part of the historical landscape. In fact, they encountered remarkably little resistance.

Time and history have caught up with them, as it always does to the young and avant-garde. The collapse of Communism beginning in 1989 discredited Marxism and put in question the progressive social agenda that lay at the root of social history. After all, social history originally was not just meant to study society, but to change it. The lurch rightward in the United States and Europe left social history stranded. Postmodernism provided weapons to social history’s opponents, some of whom did not in fact share postmodernism’s epistemological presuppositions, but were quite willing to use it to clear the way for conservative or even reactionary visions of reality. And time conspired with social history’s opponents as well, since the sixties generation is now retiring. But since there is as yet no clear successor to social history—cultural history has not established a comparable hegemony—certainly not in Reformation studies, Radical Reformation scholarship finds itself without a clear direction. Individual scholars are doing fine work, but there is no common agenda. This may allow for variety and creativity. It will surely lessen manifest ideological deflections that warp historical judgments. But the lack of questions that “matter” and on which there are serious theoretical or political clashes, could enervate the field and leave it to slide into irrelevance. There does seem to be a drift toward the later sixteenth century, as there is in Reformation studies as a whole. Confessionalization has also cropped up. The outsider status of the Radicals makes them interesting test cases for both the program and the reality. The Radicals may prove interesting in the question of social disciplining since, in the case of the Anabaptists, there was a more heightened level of communal discipline than even in the surrounding established churches, and with the Spiritualists the step to individual self-disciplining had already taken place. The study of Radical Spiritualism is also testing the waters of seventeenth-century cultural history. And there is always the intriguing question of the relationship between it and the early Enlightenment.

This essay will deal only with the Saxon Radicals (Karlstadt, Müntzer), the Radical Spiritualists and the Anabaptists. Unitarianism, Williams’ third subset, is neglected here, as it is in most treatments of the Radical Reformation, because its geographical centers were outside of Germany and because the denial of Christ’s divinity shifted its theological center of gravity outside the orbit of the other Radicals, even those who had doubts about the Trinity (e.g., Franck). The Anabaptists and Spiritualists, however, share three traits that alienated them from the major Protestant reformers and led to their segregation from Troeltsch’s church-type Protestants. The Radicals were thoroughly dissatisfied with the lack of visible moral improvement in the wake of the gospel. While almost all continued to hold sola fide justification, they rejected a merely imputed forensic righteousness.² They condemned the latter as a “counterfeit faith” and insisted that true faith remade the believer into a new person capable of a manifestly Christian life. Secondly, they claimed direct access to the word unmediated by the learned Protestant clergy. Whether that entailed a clear literal Bible, or possession of the Spirit, or both, often determined where an individual stood on a continuum stretching from Radical Spiritualism, through spiritualizing Anabaptism, to biblicistic Anabaptism. Thirdly, they all rejected infant baptism, although Weigel, who had no choice in the matter, found a use for the sacraments as signs pointing inward away from themselves. The Radical Spiritualists and the Anabaptists split over the question of believers’ baptism and rebaptism. The Radical Spiritualists saw no point in either and thought they gave baptism undue importance. It is unclear whether Karlstadt and Müntzer experimented with postponing baptism until children reached the age of reason. The access to the word and baptism make clear both the common front presented by the Radicals and their significant divisions.

Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1486–1541)

Karlstadt is perhaps the least understood of the Radical Reformers because he does not fit easily into the categories developed to describe later Radicals. Although by the end of his life, he was clearly a Radical Spiritualist, during his early career when he held center stage with Luther his theology was still inchoate. He had the makings of an Anabaptist, but never accepted rebaptism. He is best compared with the spiritualizing Anabaptists such as Hans Denck or Johannes Bünderlin.

Karlstadt was second only to Luther in influence during the early years of the Reformation when he published approximately ninety works in more than two hundred editions. Especially important were his writings regarding iconoclasm and the Lord’s Supper. In general, he often anticipated both Luther and the Reformation as a whole in converting theory into reality. His writings, particularly those that drew upon late medieval mysticism, remained a staple for religious dissenters from Valentin Weigel to eighteenth-century Pietism.³

However, the common historical verdict on Karlstadt simply repeated Luther’s condemnations. There was little or no attempt to actually investigate him or his writings until the beginning of the twentieth century. The modern study of Karlstadt began with Hermann Barge (1905).⁴ Barge argued for Karlstadt’s independence as a thinker and credited him with offering a lay Puritanism that constituted an important alternative to Luther, although Karlstadt continued to agree with Luther on fundamental theological issues. Karl Müller replied by repristinating the traditional Lutheran stereotype.⁵ For half a century, Karlstadt research followed one of these two approaches. Some scholars viewed Karlstadt as derived from and in basic agreement with Luther; their clash would then simply reflect personal antagonism or disagreement on the pace of reform.⁶ Other scholars adopted Luther’s condemnation by positing a fundamental difference between the two that made Karlstadt an alien element in the Reformation proper. They usually emphasized the medieval and mystical elements in his theology.⁷ But it must be noted that even those like Barge, who wrote positively about Karlstadt, assumed Luther as the standard against which to measure Karlstadt, rather than examining Karlstadt’s theology on its own terms.

Close examination of Karlstadt’s writings did not necessarily preclude a Lutheran frame of reference. Ernst Kähler’s study of Karlstadt’s commentary on Augustine’s De spiritu et litera not surprisingly tended to overemphasize the Augustinian character of Karlstadt’s entire theology.⁸ However, his conclusion that Karlstadt was a Schwärmer and a mystic simply repeated Luther and rendered the entire exercise superfluous. American historians in the 1950s and 1960s finally broke out of the entrenched ideological fronts. Gordon Rupp saw in Karlstadt a forerunner of Puritanism and placed him on the left wing of the Reformation.⁹ More importantly, Hans Hildebrand used Karlstadt to argue that the Protestant theology of grace could assume more than one, Lutheran, form.¹⁰ The 1970s saw further substantial contributions by Americans to Karlstadt scholarship. James Preus’s study of Karlstadt, the Wittenberg movement, and Luther’s response presented Luther as a practitioner of Realpolitik confronted by a Karlstadt who brought the Bible to bear in practice on the institutional form of the church and society.¹¹ In the latter efforts, Karlstadt foreshadowed developments in the cities of Switzerland and southern Germany. While emphasizing Karlstadt’s dependence on Augustine, Preus found no substantive disagreement between Luther and Karlstadt. Rather, the two men split because of personal antagonisms and differing perceptions of the political situation and the pace of reform. Ronald Sider’s examination of Karlstadt’s Orlamünde theology reached much the same conclusion.¹² Although he emphasized Karlstadt’s independent development of mystical themes (in particular, rebirth and Gelassenheit), on the central theological issues, Sider viewed Karlstadt as being at one with Luther.

Calvin Augustine Pater was the first to truly depart from the traditional categories and concerns of earlier scholarship. Pater touted Karlstadt’s deviance from Luther and christened him the “father of the Baptist movement.”¹³ Karlstadt’s influence reached to both Ulrich Zwingli and the earliest Anabaptists in Zürich, in particular Felix Mantz and Conrad Grebel. Pater also used Karlstadt’s brief cooperation with Melchior Hoffman as evidence of Karlstadt’s influence upon northern Anabaptism and, eventually, on Dutch Anabaptist leader Menno Simmons. While Pater’s research has raised awareness of Karlstadt’s influence, thereby rescuing him from Luther’s shadow, much of his argumentation is highly speculative and tends to discount evidence that runs counter or does not contribute to his thesis.

More solid, if less venturesome, Ulrich Bubenheimer tended to ignore the concerns of earlier scholarship to pursue a research program focused on biographical detail, new sources, and Karlstadt’s place in his late medieval academic context.¹⁴ Bubenheimer sought to appreciate the full range of Karlstadt’s intellectual sources, not just Luther and mysticism. In particular, he reminded scholars that Karlstadt was a doctor of both canon and Roman laws and showed how Karlstadt’s legal training affected his intellectual development as a professor and as a reformer. Further, Bubenheimer claimed Karlstadt’s influence upon Müntzer’s appropriation of Johannes Tauler and raised the spiritualistic profile of Karstadt as a counterpart to his biblicism. Bubenheimer also emphasized Karlstadt’s significance in the Wittenberg movement as well as his experiment in Gemeindereformation.

More recent scholarship investigated Karlstadt as an independent reformer rather than merely as a thinker and writer in Luther’s wake. For example, Stefan Oehmig’s Berlin dissertation examined the provisions for care of the poor in Wittenberg in the later Middle Ages and Reformation.¹⁵ Oehmig placed Karlstadt into the context of European efforts to manage the growing phenomenon of urban poverty. Volkmar Joestel recovered Karlstadt’s career as a radical preacher of reform not only in Orlamünde, but in eastern Thüringen generally.¹⁶ Karlstadt’s communal Reformation fell victim to the territorial state’s absorption of the church within its borders. Alejandro Zorzin’s study of Karlstadt as a pamphlet writer made clear the importance of Karlstadt in the early years of the Reformation.¹⁷ Only Luther published more extensively. In his research, Zorzin unearthed an anonymous 1527 publication from Worms that he identified with the Karlstadt baptism pamphlet mentioned in Anabaptist correspondence.¹⁸ Since the Worms text did not resemble the contents of Felix Mantz’s Protestation, Calvin Pater’s case for Karlstadt’s central role in early Anabaptist thought was greatly weakened. Pater responded by ascribing the newly discovered pamphlet to Gerhard Westerburg, Karlstadt’s brother-in-law.¹⁹ This claim has found little acceptance.

Research on Karlstadt’s theology continued in detailed studies that may eventually lead to its general reevaluation. The mystical roots of Karlstadt’s theology still attracted attention.²⁰ The Platonism in Karlstadt’s eucharistic theology has finally received some attention.²¹ Other new research demonstrated that Karlstadt was a trilingual humanist, having not only Greek and Latin but Hebrew as well.²² His linguistic ability lends added importance to his establishment of the Protestant biblical canon, as well as its significance for modern biblical criticism.²³ The picture of Karlstadt that emerges has greater complexity and depth. Clearly Luther and his Reformation discovery was only one factor, though perhaps the most important, in Karlstadt’s development as a theologian and practical reformer. Released from Luther’s tutelage and Lutheran confessionalism, Karlstadt became a very interesting subject for investigation.²⁴ A measure of his newfound attractiveness (and his earlier neglect) are the plans to finally produce a critical edition of his collected works.²⁵ There is still much to understand about his thought and reform program. His contemporary impact and place in the dissident tradition of the next two centuries also need to be pursued. What we now know may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Thomas Müntzer (d. 1525)

Although the extent of Müntzer’s impact in his own time can probably not compare with Karlstadt’s, his reputation has overshadowed Karlstadt’s since the sixteenth century. For this Müntzer could thank both his enemies and eventual admirers. Luther made him the tar with which to brush all the other Radicals; Marxists would heroicize him for exactly the same reason.

Thoroughly demonized by Luther and the Lutheran church, Müntzer’s name became a byword for rebellion and religious violence.²⁶ He was portrayed as a deadly heretic, a bloodthirsty murderer, a raving fanatic, and an enemy to all that was good and decent. Only in the eighteenth century did Gottfried Arnold finally find words of praise for Müntzer and his mystically inspired theology.²⁷ However it was Friedrich Engels’ rediscovery of Müntzer as the protagonist of the early bourgeois revolution (frühbürgerliche Revolution) that made the sixteenth-century theologian and preacher into a social revolutionary in the war between the classes.²⁸ For Engels, Müntzer was the hero that Luther would have been had he not sold out to the feudal princes. A clear-eyed visionary, Müntzer was a modern thinker. In the sixteenth century, theology was simply the appropriate vehicle to legitimate an essentially secularizing revolution aimed at a this-worldly utopia. The glorification of Müntzer by Marxists served only to reinforce the dark legend of Müntzer in conservative Germany. The figures of Luther and Müntzer became symbols of two ideological visions.²⁹

Protestant historians in the nineteenth century maintained and updated the Luther version of Müntzer making him a thinly disguised representative for the modern revolutions that threatened state and church, and discovering profound psychological or character flaws that explained his “madness” and, by implication, that of modern malcontents.³⁰ It was only in the early twentieth century that a new more sophisticated Lutheran analysis of Müntzer made an appearance. Karl Holl’s Müntzer was not a caricature, even if Holl judged Müntzer harshly.³¹ For Holl, Müntzer’s theology was derivative of Luther’s, but Müntzer intensified the elements of medieval mysticism to give Müntzer’s theology great personal intensity, at the cost of loosing the restraints provided by holy scripture. Holl also argued that Müntzer’s political and social action brought a tension into Müntzer’s thought since Holl was convinced that mystically based theology did not accord well with social activism. In a way, Holl agreed with the Marxists that Müntzer’s revolutionary activities were not theologically based. Having conceded a Lutheran base to Müntzer’s theology, Holl had to isolate it from social consequences in order to distance both Luther and the Reformation from the social unrest that the Catholics had always laid to their charge.

Another Lutheran, Heinrich Böhmer, disagreed with Holl concerning the theological roots of Müntzer’s violent agenda.³² For Böhmer, the key to Müntzer’s thought and behavior was to be found in an apocalypticism derived from Taborite chiliasm. The only thing that Müntzer had gotten from mysticism was his insistence upon mortification of the believer. But that was bound up in an apocalyptic vision based upon the Old Testament in which Müntzer plays the role of a Mordprophet proclaiming a renewed kingdom of God. An apocalyptic preacher, Müntzer was not a leading figure in the Peasants’ War. Unlike Holl, Böhmer rejected completely the Marxist Müntzer as social revolutionary. Between them, the two Lutheran church historians and the Marxists provided the templates for Müntzer for the rest of the century: the mystic, the apocalyptic, and the revolutionary.

Carl Hinrichs’ study of Müntzer’s right of resistance published just after World War II was a milestone in Müntzer research.³³ Neither a church historian nor a Marxist, Hinrichs placed Müntzer firmly into his historical setting and emphasized his gradual development into the Radical. Müntzer turned to the people to wield the sword against the godless only after losing out to Luther for the support of the Saxon princes. Employing the same passage from Romans 13:1 that Luther used to demand submission to authority, Müntzer argued that rulers who failed to serve God were to be replaced. As this example shows, Müntzer’s theological insights had revolutionary potential, a potential that was realized when he faced official opposition. For Hinrichs, Müntzer envisioned a new democratic and communist state under the guise of the kingdom of God. Unlike Luther, who expected the end of the world, Müntzer preached a new earthly age. Hinrichs’ interpretation bound together the religious and social revolutionary that others had resolutely separated since he recognized that such a separation was foreign not only to Müntzer, but to Luther as well.

As with much else, the study of Müntzer began to shift its ground in the 1960s. The Marxist historian Manfred Bensing presented a Müntzer who was first and foremost a theologian, but whose failure as a revolutionary was the product of his erroneous assessment of the times. His utopian vision was too far ahead of the historical timetable.³⁴ The triumph of the bourgeois, not the establishment of communist communities, was necessary to move society forward to a later denouement in which capitalism would be overcome. Despite Bensing’s appreciation of Müntzer the theologian and preacher, in the end Bensing offered a split picture of Müntzer in which the religious and the secular ran parallel but did not coincide. Müntzer was clearly the social revolutionary and not the apocalyptic. By contrast, Walter Elliger, whose biography of Müntzer was both massive and based on detailed research, maintained the Lutheran confessional position.³⁵ His Müntzer was not the social revolutionary. He was the Murder Prophet (Mordprophet) and delusional Servant of God (Knecht Gottes) whose goal was not social upheaval and justice for the lower classes, but a radical reform of church and Christianity ushering in the kingdom of God.

The mystical Müntzer reappeared with the work of Hans-Jürgen Goertz.³⁶ Unlike Holl, who believed that Luther had mediated the mystical elements in Müntzer’s thought, Goertz demonstrated Müntzer’s thorough and direct knowledge of Tauler. Goertz also argued that Müntzer went beyond his sources to produce a mysticism that fueled Müntzer’s social engagement rather than subverting it. As Goertz would later admit, he failed to give the apocalyptic element its due weight. By contrast, Gottfried Maron refurbished the apocalyptic Müntzer by drawing attention to Müntzer’s focus upon the “judgment of God” (Gericht Gottes).³⁷ For Maron, apocalypticism was what bound together Müntzer theology and made sense of his biography. Reinhard Schwarz pursued the Taborite connection suggested by Böhmer and argued that chiliasm (that is, the dawning thousand-year reign of saints, not the apocalyptic reign of God) formed the center of Müntzer’s theology.³⁸ Unfortunately, Schwarz could present no evidence that Müntzer in fact knew Taborite teachings, which in any event differed significantly from Müntzer’s own positions.

In general, while Western historians tended to give greater weight to the social revolutionary side of Müntzer than they had previously, and Marxist historians increasingly conceded the theological cast of Müntzer thought and career, no consensus could be achieved in the 1970s and 1980s. The period was productive, instead, of detailed studies of isolated aspects of Müntzer. The most important results came, as in the case of Karlstadt, from Bubenheimer.³⁹ His careful archival work filled gaps in Müntzer’s early life and education. Müntzer’s family had some connection with the goldsmith’s trade and may have held much the same position in society as Luther’s. In other words, Müntzer was not a man of the people (the lower classes). Bubenheimer also made clear that humanism played a greater role in Müntzer’s early development than is customarily believed. Bubenheimer established Müntzer’s presence in Wittenberg in 1517 through 1518, though Bubenheimer argued Müntzer may have associated more with Melanchthon and Karlstadt than Luther. The young Müntzer was still innocent of revolutionary tendencies when he arrived in Zwickau in 1520.

The celebration in 1989 of Müntzer’s putative birth five hundred years before produced a raft of biographies and other studies, though it could not be said that they moved the field forward very much. Müntzer the bloodthirsty apocalyptic, the earnest mystic, and the committed revolutionary made their appearances. The best and most balanced treatment came from the Marxist historian Günter Vogler.⁴⁰ By contrast, Abraham Friesen recreated the traditional Mordprophet Müntzer. But Friesen also directed attention to a new mystical source, the apocryphal life of Tauler that accompanied early editions.⁴¹ Tom Scott’s entry is valuable for his treatment of the covenants and leagues that Müntzer inspired. Defensive in nature, they were designed to protect the reform movement from threatening Catholic princes.⁴² Rather than leading a worldwide revolution of the saints, Müntzer’s expressed goal in 1525 was to conquer lands in a 50-mile radius from Mühlhausen. Hans-Jürgen Goertz’s biography maintained the primacy of the mystical roots of Müntzer’s theology, but accommodated both apocalyptic and revolutionary strands as well.⁴³ Finally, Gerhard Brendler’s effort to incorporate Müntzer’s theology into the standard Marxist interpretation, foundered on Brendler’s weak theological grounding and resulted in an apocalyptic Müntzer much like Friesen’s.⁴⁴

The most important product of the Müntzer year was a volume of essays on The Theologian Thomas Müntzer edited by Siegfried Bräuer and Helmar Junghans.⁴⁵ This remarkable collection of substantive essays on every aspect of Müntzer’s theology clearly established him as a theologian with a sophisticated body of doctrine and a figure in his own right, not merely a counterweight to Martin Luther. While the social revolutionary did not disappear in the collection, he did recede into the background. Given the reunification of Germany in the years following this volume’s publication, the theological heft given to Müntzer makes probable a continuing focus on his religious profile.

The 1989 commemoration marked the highwater mark of scholarly interest in Müntzer. The collapse of the SED regime in East Germany eliminated much of the ideological motivation, although this had in fact already begun to ebb. More importantly, material support disappeared. A continued interest in Müntzer would also not help an East German scholar’s integration into the West German academic establishment. The general shift of interest to the later Reformation and confessionalization also took its toll. Since 1990 the production of Müntzer scholarship has collapsed. Even my piece on Müntzer’s apocalypticism owed its inception to the occasion of the millennium.⁴⁶ There have been some exceptions including the 1999 dissertation of William McNiel on both Müntzer and Karlstadt.⁴⁷ And there is renewed interest in Müntzer’s relationship to the Grebel circle in Zurich.⁴⁸ Müntzer research may need the coattails of Anabaptism whose modern heirs guarantee continuing interest. Müntzer research is also hobbled to some extent by a not quite critical edition by Günther Franz.⁴⁹ Because its shortcomings are widely recognized, scholars have produced critical editions of selected works in connection with their own research interests.⁵⁰ In his English translation of Müntzer’s collected works, Peter Matheson also corrected some of the texts.⁵¹ Serious researchers would be advised to consult the originals of works that lack a critical edition.

The Radical Spiritualists

Radical Spiritualism was born in the late nineteenth century, at least historiographically speaking. The term and the religious category was first applied to Sebastian Franck by Alfred Hegler in 1892.⁵² In 1912, Ernest Troeltsch incorporated the Spiritualists as the third ideal type in his taxonomy.⁵³ The Quaker Rufus Jones in 1914 recognized a group of “spiritual reformers,” while Johannes Kuhn (1923) included them as one of the five basic forms of Protestantism.⁵⁴ George Williams (1957) filled out the picture of Radical Spiritualism and proposed three subcategories: Revolutionary (Müntzer, Karlstadt, and the Zwickau prophets), Rationalist (Sebastian Franck, Paracelsus, and Valentin Weigel), and Evangelical (Schwenckfeld).⁵⁵ Recently, I offered a refinement of the Williams typology based upon the natures, characteristics, and sources of two understandings of “Spirit”: Biblical/Charismatic (Müntzer), Platonic/Noetic (Franck and Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert), and Platonic/Sacramental (Schwenckfeld, Weigel).⁵⁶ Despite the inherently individualistic character of Radical Spiritualism, the four main Radical Spiritualists form a tightly clustered group of thinkers who often knew and used each other’s works. What they shared was an extreme form of the tendency shared by all Protestant reformers to diminish or dismiss human or material mediation between God and the individual.

SEBASTIAN FRANCK

Sebastian Franck’s 1531 letter to Johannes Campanus is the classic exposition of Radical Spiritualism.⁵⁷ Franck argued that the church had disappeared shortly after the apostles, but that reestablishing the apostolic church made no sense because mature Christians no longer needed the “toys” that God had conceded to the young church. Instead, the Christian should focus upon the “divine spark” (funklein) within, a concept Franck had taken from the Theologia Deutsch that lay at the heart of Franck’s spiritualism. A printer, Franck compiled and printed a number of standard reference works on history, geography, and aphorisms, each of which was also a vehicle for his spiritualistic views.⁵⁸ Franck’s contributions to the writing of history, geography, and German literature have made it difficult to encompass the man.⁵⁹ Both his own works and those he reprinted by writers such as Erasmus and Agrippa von Nettesheim reflected his increasing epistemological and religious skepticism. In the Paradoxes (1534), he would conclude that scripture itself served only to confuse, thereby driving the Christian inward to the inner word.⁶⁰ Although very much the loner in his life, his books made him the second most influential radical after Karlstadt.⁶¹

There has been little doubt since Alfred Hager’s pioneering work on Franck that late medieval mysticism, especially the Theologia Deutsch and Johannes Tauler’s Sermons, lies at the root of most Radical Spiritualism.⁶² Karl Holl and Steven Ozment reaffirmed that interpretation.⁶³ Parallel to the religious Franck, however, there quickly developed a secularized version: Franck as forerunner of modern German idealism.⁶⁴ While a Franck shorn of his religious context and character clearly is misconstrued, the secular version of Franck made him an interesting subject for the philosophers, who produced a number of penetrating studies of his thought.⁶⁵ Less helpful was Franck’s adoption by German Romantics and nationalists in a spate of publications of dubious value, particularly in the Nazi era.

Everhard Teufel’s work served as a bridge between earlier scholarship and the new. His 1954 biography grounded Franck in the cities of southern Germany and the Reformation milieu. It provided a solid historical platform for further research on his intellectual and religious development.⁶⁶ Horst Weigelt’s study of Franck’s early development remains foundational for any later treatment of him as a religious figure.⁶⁷ Christoph De Jung’s analysis of the library that Franck left at his death has proven particularly useful.⁶⁸ Most recently Patrick Hayden-Roy has produced an updated biography.⁶⁹ Franck’s varied educational background and voracious reading meant that other traditions exercised influence as well, in particular Erasmian humanism and Scholastic nominalism, both of which reinforced the impact of the Theologia Deutsch’s negative theology on the most salient aspect of Franck’s thought—thoroughgoing skepticism.⁷⁰ His skepticism played a large role in his support for religious toleration.⁷¹

The trajectory for Franck studies is not clear. The tension between the religious/theological interpretation of Franck and the secular/philosophical can still be seen in the work of Siegfried Wollgast, the foremost proponent of the pantheistic Franck.⁷² The question of Franck’s influence has not been exhausted.⁷³ The general shift of interest to the later Reformation and the seventeenth century is moving research on Franck forward in time to his impact on theosophical literature and Pietism.⁷⁴ And there are intriguing questions concerning his relationship to—of all things—the debacle at Münster that could presage some revision of the rationalist saint.⁷⁵ The new critical edition that began to appear in 1992 will doubtless open up new avenues of research and facilitate conversation among the many disciplines interested in Franck.⁷⁶ As with Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, so with Franck, we are dealing with a phenomenon that reaches far into the intellectual life of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in the Netherlands and Germany. A connection between Radical Spiritualism and the Enlightenment, particularly regarding toleration, has often been claimed. Only such a broader cultural approach can establish a relationship between the Reformation religious movement and the secular turn of the Enlightenment.⁷⁷

CASPAR SCHWENCKFELD

Unlike Franck, Caspar Schwenckfeld (1489–1561) already enjoys a full modern edition because Schwenckfeld (paradoxically for a Radical Spiritualist) left a church that still bears his name.⁷⁸ Schwenckfeld differed from the other Radical Spiritualists in a number of other ways: his social status (noble), the sources of his theological vision, and his irenic temper.⁷⁹ The first and last were doubtless closely related.

Schwenckfeld’s noble status shielded him from many of the dangers confronting other Radicals in his own time, but also offered him some protection from later scholarly vitriol. Beginning in the nineteenth century, he was well served by local historians in Silesia who established the basic outline of his early life and career. Research in the twentieth century has concentrated on his relationship to Luther, the sources of his thought, the influence of Krautwald, and the key components of his theology. Despite Schwenckfeld’s claims to the contrary, some scholars have denied that Schwenckfeld was ever truly a follower of Luther.⁸⁰ Others have admitted his reliance upon Luther’s theology, but believe he misunderstood and misconstrued it in ways that presage his later spiritualism.⁸¹ Still others have argued that Schwenckfeld remained a loyal and well-informed Lutheran until 1524.⁸² Mysticism, in particular Tauler (Theologia Deutsch is strangely absent from Schwenckfeld’s writings), has often been credited, wrongly, as an important source either before or after Schwenckfeld’s break with Luther.⁸³ Humanism has also been suggested.⁸⁴ In the Eucharistic controversy, both Karlstadt and Zwingli have been seen as the sources of Schwenckfeld’s own position.⁸⁵ Unlike Karlstadt and Zwingli, however, Schwenckfeld argued for the necessity of a real spiritual participation in Christ. He appealed to John 6:54–57, while they cited John 6:63. There has been some speculation about influence from the Bohemian Brethren’s teaching on the Eucharist.⁸⁶ I have argued that Schwenckfeld’s Eucharistic theology developed out of late medieval Eucharistic piety, in particular the practice and doctrine of spiritual communion.⁸⁷

The exact relationship between Krautwald’s teaching and Schwenckfeld’s theology has troubled some scholars who correctly believe that Krautwald has not received recognition for developing much of their common theology.⁸⁸ Krautwald’s Augustinian spiritualism was less thoroughgoing than Schwenckfeld’s and that allowed Krautwald to retain a greater commitment to the visible church than would his colleague. Schwenckfeld denied the existence of a Christian church but, unlike Franck, he expected the reinstitution of the apostolic church at Christ’s second coming.⁸⁹ Schwenckfeld also believed scripture had a positive value for those with the spirit.⁹⁰ The “knowledge of Christ” (Erkenntnis Christi) played a central role in his thought. Schwenckfeld’s peculiar heavenly flesh Christology denying the creaturehood of the humanity of Christ has attracted attention.⁹¹ What has not been studied as it should are the decades after 1540. Schwenckfeld published ceaselessly during those years and clashed with opponents as different as Pilgram Marpeck and Matthias Flaccius.⁹²

The Schwenckfelder movement in southern Germany and the Schwenckfelder communities in Silesia have been studied.⁹³ More work should be done in other regions, in particular Poland and the Baltic littoral, the middle and lower Rhine, and Switzerland. The sizable collection of his works in the library of Sir David Lindsay (ca. 1490–1555), known as the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, in Wigan, England, the birthplace of Gerrard Winstanley, suggests that this might also be a fruitful area of study. Because of the remarkable prominence of women among Schwenckfeld’s followers, his theology offers an interesting object of gender analysis, something that is rare elsewhere in Radical Reformation historiography.⁹⁴ The paradoxical existence of a spiritualist “church” in southern Germany presents a unique opportunity to track the social context and significance of what would otherwise be an almost invisible phenomenon. The Schwenckfelders present an interesting example of the limits of confessionalization and the ways in which individuals eluded political and social enforcement of religious conformity.⁹⁵ That the southern German branch can be traced well into the seventeenth century (the Silesian branch continues to this day in North America) also helps to fill the gap between Reformation and early Enlightenment that is of increasing interest to scholars. Even more than Franck, Schwenckfeld was kept in play by his followers in theosophical and pietistic circles.

VALENTIN WEIGEL

The second-generation spiritualist and Nicodemite pastor of Zschopau in Meissen, Valentin Weigel (1533–88), is the most striking evidence of a lively intellectual insurgency beneath the enforced conformity of the confessionalizing Saxon state church. He is also the most important medium through which spiritualistic impulses were transmitted to Paracelsian and theosophical circles. At the same time, he was the crucial link in the chain leading from Radical Spiritualism to both Pietism and reformers who remained within the pale of orthodoxy.⁹⁶

Weigel lived the confessionalization of Lutheran Saxony.⁹⁷ Despite the thoroughly heretical cast of his thought, however, Weigel faced questions only once, in the year (1572) Lutheran rulers imposed a Formula of Concord to end the controversies that had wracked the Lutheran churches since the Augsburg Interim. Weigel’s unwilling subscription to the formula left a bad taste in his mouth that only grew with time. His one brush with the authorities also taught him to conceal his discontent and his secret rejection of the reigning orthodoxy, and perhaps of Lutheranism itself. With each passing year, the radicalness of his critique and the boldness of his speculation increased.

The most pressing issue in Weigel studies concerns the separation of Weigel’s own work from that of his first editors, admirers, and imitators. Much has passed under his name that probably stemmed from his colleague Benedikt Biedermann, his cantor Christoph Weickhart, and the publisher of Paracelsus’ theological works, Johann Staricius.⁹⁸ After a false start, a new critical edition has begun to appear.⁹⁹ In the meantime, since some of Weigel’s most influential works remain under suspicion, interpretations of his thought are in some sense provisional. But the impact of Weigeliana, both authentic and spurious, cannot be doubted.¹⁰⁰ Among others, two seminal figures of the seventeenth century, Jacob Boehme (1575–1624) and, especially, Johannes Arndt (1555–1621), were in his debt, and through them he contributed to the theosophical current and Pietism. A measure of his influence is the fact that “Weigelian” replaced “Schwenckfelder” as the worst form of Lutheran opprobrium.

Although Weigel drew upon many and varied sources—his wide reading at University shows that he already harbored heterodox notions—a few stand out: Luther, medieval mysticism, Radical Spiritualism, Platonism, and Paracelsus. Weigel skillfully played the young Luther against his orthodox epigones in a way that foreshadows Johannes Arndt and Pietism. It remains unclear if his appeal to Luther was disingenuous. Weigel drew upon a number of other Radical Spiritualists, but he was the follower of none. His theology resembled Schwenckfeld’s, but he more frequently appealed to Franck, and even had kind things to say about Müntzer. Wiegel held a heavenly flesh Christology as had Schwenckfeld, but gave it a Paracelsian twist. He was also less categorical in his rejection of the church and scripture than Franck.¹⁰¹ His criticism of the collusion of church and state to oppress the poor laity sounds much like Müntzer—he even appealed to Müntzer’s Daniel statue from the Sermon to the Princes—although Weigel completely rejected the use of force in religion.¹⁰² His pacifism on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War was prescient and drew the attention of contemporaries and later scholars. Among the Radical Spiritualists whose conception of spirit was Platonic in nature, he alone read deeply in the Neoplatonists, particularly Proclus, and understood the foundational metaphysical assumptions underpinning the Radical Spiritualist spirit/matter dualism. Despite that, Weigel was drawn to Paracelsus whose works Weigel was among the first to appreciate.¹⁰³ Paracelsus’ fundamental insights, however, put in question any spirit/matter dualism. Recapitulating developments in ancient Neoplatonism, Weigel borrowed Paracelsus’ mediating “sidereal” cosmos to bridge the gap whose maintenance, however, was essential to his entire religious approach. In fact, Weigel’s cosmological speculations are hard to reconcile with the Radical Spiritualists’ disinterest in the physical universe.

Given Weigel’s intellectual location at the intersection of so many crosscurrents, it is not surprising that there are sharp disagreements over where to place him in the religion and culture of the age. Horst Pfefferl, for example, argued that despite the Saxon state church’s condemnation, Weigel remained a Lutheran, though one closer to Luther himself than to the orthodoxy of Weigel’s own time.¹⁰⁴ Martin Brecht, by contrast, makes of him a proto-Pietist.¹⁰⁵ Hans Maier took more seriously both Weigel’s debt to medieval mysticism and his Radical Spiritualism.¹⁰⁶ Maier and Heinz Längin both claimed that Weigel’s epistemology foreshadowed Kant’s.¹⁰⁷ Going further, Siegfried Wollgast argued that Weigel was first and foremost a philosopher who was critical not only of the established church, but of religion generally.¹⁰⁸ Wollgast assigned Weigel a prominent place in the same progressive pantheist tradition as Sebastian Franck. Weigel’s Paracelsianism, however, threatens to undermine both Wollgast’s thesis and the various religious interpretations of it as well. The polymath Franck was difficult to categorize because of the breadth and variety of his interests. Weigel poses even greater challenges because of his contributions to competing explanatory disciplines (theology vs. “science”) with contradictory primal assumptions (dualism vs. materialism). His conceptual elusiveness, the unresolved identification of his authentic writings, the general shift to the later Reformation, and the new prominence of cultural history will make Weigel a continuing subject of research and debate.

DIRCK VOLKERTSZOON COORNHERT

In turning to Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert (1522–90), we leave rarified German mystical-philosophical-cosmological speculation for bracing Dutch common sense. Though contemporaries, Coornhert and Weigel shared little but their opposition to overweening clerically dominated established churches. If Weigel looked forward to Pietism and theosophism, Coornhert foreshadowed modern religious individualism and religious freedom. And while Weigel maintained a subtle Nicodemite subterfuge in the “belly of the beast,” Coornhert was the most public of Radical Spiritualists whose own views and criticism of others were to be found in the bookshops of Holland.

Coornhert was born into a wealthy Amsterdam merchant family.¹⁰⁹ He received a solid basic education, though unlike the other Spiritualists, he never attended university. Even more than they, he was an autodidact, but immensely well read. At the age of twenty-two, his reading of Luther, Calvin, Menno Simons, and Franck made him a Radical Spiritualist. Only later would he find the Theologia Deutsch, but it would remain his favorite and he reread it often. Erasmus would also be valued. Protestantism, Radical Spiritualism, mysticism, and humanism provided the basic stock of his intellectual storehouse, although constant reading continually added to the store.

Coornhert is best known for his defense of religious freedom.¹¹⁰ He recognized in the Calvinists a new threat to religious liberty and opposed their teachings on original sin, bondage of the will, sola fide justification, and predestination. They, for their part, sought to silence him, but were forced to meet his criticism both in print and public disputation. His Synod on the Freedom of Conscience (1582) was the most extensive treatment of religious freedom in the sixteenth century. Although Coornhert did not deny the existence of heresy, he argued that it could not be prosecuted without injustice and that toleration benefited both church and state. He rejected Franck’s skepticism and equated the “divine spark” with reason, laying the groundwork for a transition from Radical Spiritualism to Enlightenment rationalism.¹¹¹ He also denied that the church had disappeared from the earth, as most Radicals and certainly Franck argued. The Catholic Church remained the only true church since none of the Protestant churches could prove their divine calling, but the Catholic Church was so encrusted with error and abuse as to be useless. Coornhert never formally left the Catholic Church nor did he join any other. Coornhert wrote the first book of ethics in a modern language, and did so without appealing to scripture, but only at the request of his editor. His rejection of original sin and his condemnation of predestination as blasphemous accompanied a vigorous defense of human freedom and the teaching of human perfectibility (“perfectism,” “perfectibilism”). He even admitted to agreement with the arch-heretic Pelagius. Arminius may well have learned much from Coornhert, as the Contra-Remonstrants claimed.

Reading Coornhert, it is difficult to believe that the Zwickau Prophets appeared in Wittenberg the year he was born, or that the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster fell in his thirteenth year, or that his adult life coincided with the surge of confessionalization, or that he died twenty-eight years before the Synod of Dort. As much as the other Radical Spiritualists looked forward to modern developments, Coornhert’s thought is modern in important ways. Recognition of his modernity has led some to see him as a purely secular thinker, much as it has for both Franck and Weigel. Because his nontheological Ethics was intellectually more accessible to modern scholars, many have based their judgments of him upon it alone. The Ethics relied entirely upon human reason, so some nineteenth-century writers claimed him as a representative of universal theism, though it is clear that he was a convinced Christian.¹¹² Others thought him a Stoic.¹¹³ Still others have seen him as a pure rationalist and humanist.¹¹⁴ German scholars, on the other hand, attempted to bring him into the main arena of the Reformation, by claiming his dependence on Erasmus, Zwingli, and Schwenckfeld.¹¹⁵

The twentieth century saw a continuation of many of these questions. For example, the role of the classics and Coornhert’s access to them has revived questions concerning how Christian he was.¹¹⁶ But it has also finally seen the rediscovery of the religious Coornhert in the work of Bruno Becker during the 1920s and 1930s.¹¹⁷ Nonetheless, since World War II Coornhert scholarship has focused upon his role in the history of religious toleration.¹¹⁸ Promisingly, a collection of essays published in 1989 for the four-hundredth anniversary of Coornhert’s death presents a wider, richer picture of his thought.¹¹⁹

Coornhert remains little known outside of Holland since he wrote in Dutch. But that he wrote in his native tongue and may be said to have laid the foundations for modern Dutch, made him a factor to be reckoned with in his own time.¹²⁰ He rivals Schwenckfeld in the volume of his writings and he surpasses Franck in the range of his genres: engraving, poetry, drama, ethics, translations, philosophy, theology, penology, and politics. It would be too much to say that Coornhert is virgin territory, but he remains relatively unexplored. The recent efforts of Gerrit Voogt to bring him to the attention of English-speaking scholars may help remedy the neglect. Sources are not lacking, but they are rarely found in modern editions. His 1630 collected works contain most but not all of his writings. Some have been republished, but others are missing.¹²¹ We may not have a full accounting of his oeuvre in any event. Most importantly, the engravings need study. Although his plays and poems are well known to Dutch literary historians, analyzing them for religious, philosophical, or political content largely remains to be done. The new interest in the later sixteenth century and the increased attention to the Netherlands in the larger narrative of Europe,¹²² give Coornhert studies great promise.

Anabaptism

Twentieth-century Anabaptist historiography is a story of the rise and fall of Harold Bender’s “Anabaptist Vision.”¹²³ Published in 1944, Bender’s “Anabaptist Vision” was both a manifesto and a blueprint for a new positive understanding of sixteenth-century Anabaptism. Bender identified three defining characteristics of what he called “normative Anabaptism”: discipleship, sectarian separatism, and pacifism. Such a definition excluded, and was meant to exclude, “aberrant” Anabaptists like Hans Hut and Balthasar Hubmaier in the south and the Melchiorites/Münsterites in the north. The legitimate line of succession began with Conrad Grebel and his colleagues in Zurich, achieved its classic expression in the 1527 Schleitheim Confession of the martyred Michael Sattler, and found its abiding expression in the Dutch Mennonites and the Moravian Hutterites.

Another term Bender used, “Evangelical Anabaptism,” reveals an agenda within an agenda. Modern Mennonitism, he believed, had fallen victim to a Pietistic spirituality that threatened true Bible Christianity. A conservative American Protestant himself, Bender’s “Anabaptist Vision” presented an Anabaptism that was Protestantism carried to its logical conclusion, and that was a purely religious phenomenon lacking any social roots, agenda, or implications. In a word, the Anabaptists were not sixteenth-century Bolsheviks. The “Anabaptist Vision” sold well in 1950s America. It should be noted, however, that even at this early stage, the Canadian Mennonite Walther Klaassen (in 1963) had shown a diversity of opinions among the early Anabaptists concerning the dangerous topic of the Holy Spirit. And Bender’s friend and colleague Robert Friedmann, an Austrian Jewish convert to Mennonitism, offered an alternative understanding of Anabaptism as being neither Catholic nor Protestant, to borrow the title of Klaassen’s later book.¹²⁴

Although never unchallenged, Bender’s “normative Anabaptism” was only undone by revisionist historians beginning in the 1970s. The revisionists rejected confessionally defined “normative Anabaptism” and took cognizance of the geographical and theological diversity characteristic of the first generation of Anabaptists. James Stayer’s Anabaptists and the Sword showed that pacificism and apoliticalism were not characteristic of all Anabaptists, that each group responded to their immediate circumstances, and that even the Zurich Anabaptists only gradually accepted nonviolence. Gottfried Seebass and Werner Packull established the medieval mystical origins and apocalyptic character of South German Anabaptism that derived from Thomas Müntzer by way of Hans Hut.¹²⁵ Stephen Ozment had already argued for the decisive role of mysticism, in particular the Theologia Deutsch, in promoting religious and political dissent, including Hans Hut and Hans Denck as well as Müntzer, Franck, Weigel, and Sebastian Castellio.¹²⁶ Kenneth Davis retained Bender’s “normative Anabaptism,” but revived Albrecht Ritschl’s thesis of a medieval ascetic origin.¹²⁷ Klaus Deppermann’s study of Melchior Hoffmann established both Hoffmann’s Anabaptist credentials and his contribution to the apocalyptic theocracy of Münster.¹²⁸ For the revisionists, “polygenesis” had replaced “monogenesis,”¹²⁹ theological diversity had replaced the normative vision, and Protestant biblicism now competed with medieval mysticism and asceticism as genetic explanations.

The initial assault on the “Anabaptist Vision” had been conducted with the weapons of intellectual history at a time when social history was already asserting itself. Claus Peter Clasen’s brash Anabaptism: A Social History combined quantification with a principled disinterest in the religious dimension. His conclusions were unsettling, to say the least. Initially most Anabaptists were in the cities, but as persecution eliminated its educated leadership and drove the rank and file into the countryside, it became a predominantly peasant movement. The earlier urban character made any connection to the Peasants’ War unlikely, and Clasen denied it. While the Bender school may have welcomed that conclusion, they could not have been happy that Clasen reduced the extent of persecution and argued that the Anabaptist phenomenon was neither numerically nor historically significant, estimating a total of 30,000 adherents (exclusive of the Melchiorite north, which he did not study) up to the Thirty Years’ War. Although Clasen’s method, failure to consider the religious elements of the movement, and conclusions were challenged, his study had a sobering effect.

The Marxists, of course, had long offered the explanation that Anabaptism represented disillusioned sectarian withdrawal after the shattering defeat of the early bourgeois revolution.¹³⁰ Albert Mellinck’s findings on Holland, an area not studied by Clasen, contradicted Clasen on Anabaptist connections to revolutionary violence.¹³¹ Mellinck found that a revolutionary form of Anabaptism had enjoyed a very large following for quite some time in the 1530s, that is, the era of Münster. Mellinck’s work began a process in Dutch Mennonite studies that paralleled that going on for the south. The Melchiorites were increasingly accepted as central to Dutch Anabaptism. It was also conceded that Menno came from their ranks and even that he had retained a version of Hoffman’s “heavenly flesh” Christology.¹³² David Waite’s work on David Joris reaffirmed that Joris, not Menno, was the most prominent leader of Dutch Anabaptists in the immediate post-Münster period.¹³³

Despite their differences, Clasen, the Marxists, and Mellinck did agree that Anabaptism was primarily a lower-class phenomenon, appealing to poorer elements in society. Karl-Heinz Kirchhoff undid that comfortable assumption by showing that in Münster the Anabaptists enjoyed relative prosperity and that their leadership was drawn from the traditional elites.¹³⁴ The belief that Anabaptism was linked with the Peasants’ War has fared better. Earlier research establishing the involvement of later Anabaptists in the Peasants’ War was confirmed.¹³⁵ J. F. G. Goeters had already shown links between Anabaptism and peasant resistance to Zurich’s policy of centralization.¹³⁶ Stayer and Martin Haas followed that up by arguing that the earliest Anabaptists had participated in the efforts by rural congregations to abolish the tithe, or perhaps apply it to local needs, in order to independently cleanse the church and institute truly evangelical worship.¹³⁷ Hans-Jürgen Goertz elevated anticlericalism from a minor side effect to a powerful force expressing important religious and social interests, and not only for the peasantry.¹³⁸ This entire line of inquiry culminated with Peter Blickle’s 1985 Communal Reformation (Gemeindereformation), which argued for a peasant Reformation of the “common man” intent on fulfilling the long-held desire of rural communities to take control of churches, and religion, in the villages.¹³⁹

Beginning in the 1990s, a subtle shift began that may, or may not, presage a course correction for the field of Anabaptist studies. The revisionist school’s research had focused on the disparate origins of Anabaptism and had distinguished three loci: Switzerland, southern Germany, and the lower Rhine and Low Countries. Each had a distinctive theological profile in large measure determined by its historical Sitz im Leben. New books by Stayer, Packull, and Arnold Snyder, however, emphasized a longer time line and the convergence or commonalities of the three centers. Stayer’s Peasants War and the Anabaptist Community of Goods argued that the peasants had shared a goal of establishing a just and egalitarian society based upon the Bible. In the wake of their defeat, some of the most religiously and socially committed became Anabaptists and sought to pursue the same goal through instantiating the communism of goods of Acts 2 and 4. The Hutterites most closely approximated the ideal, while the Swiss Brethren and Mennonites converted it into stewardship of wealth and readiness to aid the needy brethren. Lacking the experience of the Peasants’ War, the Melchiorites in Münster, under enormous pressure, produced a caricature. Werner Packull’s Hutterite Beginnings carefully traced the movement from its origins in the Peasants’ War in the Tyrol through innumerable internecine struggles and divisions in Moravia to the communitarian experiment of the Hutterite communities. But along the way, Packull made clear the close interconnection of Anabaptist groups all over southern Germany and Switzerland in the years after 1525. C. Arnold Snyder’s Anabaptist History and Theology sought to synthesize the findings of the preceding twenty years to extract an essence of Anabaptism, but this time ex post facto and not a priori as Bender had done. His aligning of Anabaptism with medieval asceticism would not have pleased Bender, nor would his choice of the nonpacifistic and nonseparatist Hubmaier as representative. Hubmaier is in fact something of a bellweather (see Strübind below). Some other Mennonites severely criticized Snyder on this point. Some of the criticism reflected the rise of a conservative (or reactionary, in the original sense of the term) American Evangelicalism among Mennonites that would turn its back on social activism and history to focus on theology, Jesus Christ, the family, and sexual morality.¹⁴⁰ It will bear watching to see how this new factor affects the historical study of Anabaptism.

The years since 1995 have seen attempts to overturn or at least to substantially revise the revisionists. Although of the same vintage, Abraham Friesen simply dismisses the revisionists and the work of a generation of scholars. Friesen had already (1989) produced a portrait of Thomas Müntzer that revived the Lutheran “murder prophet” tradition. Overturning decades of Dutch Mennonite historiography, Friesen denied (1998) that Menno Simons owed anything to Hoffmann, the Melchiorites, and Münster.¹⁴¹ His Erasmus, the Anabaptists, and the Great Commission (1998) ascribed the rise of adult baptism and hence Anabaptism to a theological insight derived from the biblical scholarship of the great humanist, Desiderius Erasmus.¹⁴² Theologian Andrea Strübind (2003) also emphasized the Grebel circle as a Bible study group that continued the work of earlier humanist sodalities.¹⁴³ According to her careful reading of the evidence, Anabaptism was a purely theological phenomenon produced by faithful engagement with scripture alone and unconnected with the contemporary social upheaval. Her exclusion, however, of Balthasar Hubmaier and Waldshut on Zurich’s northern border from a work on the “The Early Baptist Movement in Switzerland” is dubious and detracts substantially from her claims.

Although the historical analysis that Strübind offers is traditional intellectual history, her book’s lengthy theoretical prolegomenon borrows from postmodern hermeneutic theory. She challenges the revisionist approach as just as much a faith-based normative vision as that which they criticized. But the warning, “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon,” applies since the logic of her hermeneutic critique precludes meaningful discussion above the level of basic textual issues, perhaps not even that, and produces competing “faith communities” or disciplines that could do little but rail against each other. Her own prolegomenon savors of Reformation polemic as the author smites her opponents hip and thigh. While undoing the revisionist social history Strübind has no other history with which to replace it. Rather, she argues that Church History be reconceived as historical theology. What that would do with institutional history, history of missions, liturgical history, or history of piety is not clear. But neither theology nor historical theology is history. They serve different purposes—useful purposes, but different.

Brad Gregory’s impressive Salvation at Stake also does not provide an alternative.¹⁴⁴ His reaffirmation of a nonreducible category of the religious is congenial, although one would be hard-pressed to find any of the revisionists denying the proposition. But what follows from that reaffirmation? Are we left with Leibnizian monads that coincide but don’t interact? Is it a one-way street from the religious to the social? Or are the religious and social in constant conversation, an approach that would allow for the retrieval of much that was useful from thirty years of revisionist social history? But how does one recognize which partner in the conversation is speaking? Are the sources to be taken at their word? Do historical actors always know what motivates them? Or are there larger social forces, movements, or connections that are invisible to the individuals who are part of them? Psychology and the social sciences presume this. Should historians? These daunting questions must be addressed before a new paradigm, rather than simply a revival of an older one, can take place.

There is in fact no evidence yet of a new paradigm.¹⁴⁵ If there is a shift it is toward intellectual history.¹⁴⁶ Dissertations in the United States in the past fifteen years are either straight intellectual history or a form of social history much like the revisionists’. Reprints of intellectual or theological histories from the 1960s and 1970s have been popular. But then such histories had never been lacking. There is renewed interest in the spiritualizing Anabaptists—Denck, Ludwig Hätzer, Bünderlin, Entfelder, Kautz, Obbe Phillips, Joris.¹⁴⁷ Geoffrey Dipple’s recent book does for the Anabaptist vision of history and restitution of the church what Stayer did for the doctrine of the sword in 1972, although over a longer time span and with an interest in Anabaptist confessionalism.¹⁴⁸ Moving with the larger field of Reformation studies, Michael Driedger has studied the response of Hamburg’s Mennonites to Lutheran confessionalization, and developments in the Mennonite community that parallel it.¹⁴⁹ As with the Radical Spiritualists, the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries beg to be explored.¹⁵⁰

The greatest change in Anabaptist studies is the retirement of the generation that brought about the revision of the 1970s. That, more than postmodern critiques, changes the landscape dramatically and leaves a void that may not be filled. For three decades scholars such as Stayer, Packkull, Goertz, Klaassen, and Snyder have put Anabaptism on the Reformation map. Without the intellectual energy and academic respectability that social history provided, not to mention the close relationship to the Peasants’ War that reconnected Anabaptism with the larger society, there is a real danger that the field will become again an historical backwater in which justifiable Mennonite concerns for identity and faith will overshadow the historians’ commitment to understand the past, warts and all. Social history will certainly not disappear, if only because capitalist societies agree with the Marxists in ascribing great importance to economic motives.

On the hopeful side, Anabaptist studies are well provided with source collections and editions. The Täuferakten pursue the Anabaptists into the governmental records where they most often surface. One caveat: that research project owes a great deal to the Bender school, and the principle of selection may not provide all the documents of interest to those with different approaches. There are critical editions of many of the Anabaptist leaders and English translations of most. And new manuscript sources await discovery in the archives, especially in Eastern Europe. Martin Rothkegel’s work in Moravia has done much to revise the history of Anabaptism there and to point the way to a geographical expansion of Anabaptist studies.¹⁵¹ The works of Michael Driedger and Astrid von Schlachta, for example, show the promise of a “long” Radical Reformation. Despite an opening to gender studies in the 1970s and 1980s culminating in a 1996 collection of essays, the postrevisionist era seems to have turned its back on the history of gender, perhaps because of the “progressive” agenda it shares with social history.¹⁵² Nonetheless, it is a promising field for future research. In general, despite Andrea Strübind’s challenge to the early Zurich narrative, Anabaptist studies seem to be moving beyond the beachhead of the revolutionary early German and Dutch Radical Reformations.

Bibliography

ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

Available English Translations of 16th Century Anabaptist Documents: http://www.goshen.edu/mqr/enganbib.html

Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online: http://www.gameo.org

Guide to Schwenkfelder Library Holdings and Translations: http://www.rpc.ox.ac.uk/sfld/sfldindx.htm

Links for Radical Reformation: http://cat.xula.edu/tpr/links/radical/

PRIMARY SOURCES

Coornhert, Dirck Volckszoon. Weet of Rust: Proza van Coornhert, edited by H. Bonger and A. J. Gelderbloom. Amsterdam: Querido, 1985.

——. Wercken. 3 vols. Amsterdam: Iacob Aertsz. Colom, 1630.

——. Zedekunst. dat is wellevenkunst, edited by Bruno Becker. Leiden: Brill, 1942.

Die älteste Chronik der hutterischen Brüder. Edited by A. J. F. Zieglschmid. Ithaca, NY: Cayuga Press, 1943.

Die Schriften der Münsterischen Täufer und ihrer Gegner, edited by Robert Stupperich. 3 vols. Münster: Aschendorff, 1970, 1980, 1983.

Documenta anabaptistica Neerlandica. Leiden: Brill, 1975–.

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