1528
Martyrdom of an Anabaptist theologian
Balthasar Hubmaier (1480-1528) was born in Augsburg and was educated at the universities of Freiburg and Ingolstadt. At the latter he was awarded his doctorate and was taught by Johann Eck, who was to become Luther’s first great adversary. As a Catholic priest he won fame as a preacher and became vice-rector of the university. He seems to have fallen under the influence of Erasmian humanism and then into a sort of Protestantism. In 1523 he met with Huldreich Zwingli in Zürich which deepened his new faith but they came to differ on the vexed question of infant baptism. The next year he married and was forced to flee his Waldshut church when this came to the attention of the authorities.
The year 1525 saw momentous events in the religious history of Europe. It was the year of the great German Peasant Rebellion when dozens of armed uprisings occurred against the establish order, many of them espousing radical anti-Catholic ideas. At the same time, Zürich, which had declared itself a city adhering to the reformed faith, began to harden its heart against dissidents. Hubmaier, who was fleeing the violence, was arrested by Zwingli and under torture reluctantly recanted his stand on baptism. For Hubmaier, the test of any doctrine was whether it could be defended in Scripture and he continued to preach this after he left Switzerland for Moravia. In 1528 he was arrested and imprisoned in Vienna where again he underwent torture. This time he did not recant and was burnt at the stake for heresy. His wife was executed by drowning, an ironic punishment to those who underwent immersion rebaptism.
Today Anabaptism appears a harmless and valuable piece in the mosaic of contemporary Christianity but in the sixteenth century it was viewed with abhorrence. Not only was it tainted by the violence of some of its adherents in the 1525 rebellions and the 1535 seizure of Münster, its redefinition of true religion, its rejection of tradition and its unwillingness to fight against Turks provoked harshness by Protestants and Catholics alike.