Anabaptists gain official support in Europe

Is it ASB for some European ruler to give one Anabaptist sect or another official protection or even declare it the state religion as happened with Lutheran and Calvinist faiths? Would this change any of the politics and religous wars of the 16th and 17th centuries?
I know an Anabaptist sect ran Munster for a short time before being harshly supressed, might they have survived with royal or princely support?
 
Is it ASB for some European ruler to give one Anabaptist sect or another official protection or even declare it the state religion as happened with Lutheran and Calvinist faiths? Would this change any of the politics and religous wars of the 16th and 17th centuries?
I know an Anabaptist sect ran Munster for a short time before being harshly supressed, might they have survived with royal or princely support?
It would be tough, very tough.

Anabaptists denied the efficacity of infant baptism - which essentially meant that every non-anabaptist was going to hell. There was a gulf there even wider than between Calvinists and RCs. Also, they had tendency to deny secular authority which isn't going to endear them to any prince or the prince to them. You may note that that Munster affair was a commune - a communist theocracy, as Wiki calls it.

I don't see any way any power structure will support them/nor they the power structure. So they only way to do it is if they get a big enough group/area that they can defend themselves from Crusades that the entire rest of Europe would immediately launch.

I'm not saying it's ASB, but I can't think of any way to do it that wouldn't be ASB. (I.e. someone may be smarter than me and come up with a way.) It would be tough, any way you look at it, very, VERY tough.


Our modern era is so used to Protestants and Catholics and (h/e/r/e/t/i/c/s heterodox believers like) JWs and Mormons living side by side with Jews and Atheists and you name it. A modern 21st century American or European finds it really, REALLY hard to comprehend that early modern mindset.
 
Eh, it wouldn't have been a Crusade, really, and any ideological group that manages to take power somewhere tends to engage in a little realpolitik, so it's likely that if, say, Munster had succeeded, it probably would've mellowed out within a generation (or a decade, really), and likely would've become just as entangled in the HRE's system of alliances and power plays as any other German state(-let) of the time.

That's only if it managed to win some time to settle down, mind ye. Dunno how to go about doing that.
 
Eh, it wouldn't have been a Crusade, really, and any ideological group that manages to take power somewhere tends to engage in a little realpolitik, so it's likely that if, say, Munster had succeeded, it probably would've mellowed out within a generation (or a decade, really), and likely would've become just as entangled in the HRE's system of alliances and power plays as any other German state(-let) of the time.

That's only if it managed to win some time to settle down, mind ye. Dunno how to go about doing that.

1) IF they managed to survive for a decade or two they might, indeed, mellow and survive longer. True. OTOH, the Hussites got MORE virulent as time went on, so it's not a given. If they hold out for that time, and especially if they mellow a bit, then, ya, realpolitik may well mean they ally with wierd partners. OTL France + Ottomans vs Austria or France supporting Sweden in the 30YW. In an ATL, that might look ASB, so ya.

2) why WOULDN'T it be a 'Crusade really'? The Albigensian Crusade was labelled explicitly as that, and would be a direct parallel, in many ways.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
1) IF they managed to survive for a decade or two they might, indeed, mellow and survive longer. True. OTOH, the Hussites got MORE virulent as time went on, so it's not a given. If they hold out for that time, and especially if they mellow a bit, then, ya, realpolitik may well mean they ally with wierd partners. OTL France + Ottomans vs Austria or France supporting Sweden in the 30YW. In an ATL, that might look ASB, so ya.

2) why WOULDN'T it be a 'Crusade really'? The Albigensian Crusade was labelled explicitly as that, and would be a direct parallel, in many ways.

Because calling a crusade on a the Anababtists, would make the other neighbouring (and more moderate) Protestant very worried.
 
Re: Point 2

The Albigensian Crusade was in the 13th century, while the Munster Anabaptists were in the 16th. It'd be a religious war, sure, but I'd be extremely reluctant to categorize any action on the Catholic's part as a 'Crusade'.
 
Re: Point 2

The Albigensian Crusade was in the 13th century, while the Munster Anabaptists were in the 16th. It'd be a religious war, sure, but I'd be extremely reluctant to categorize any action on the Catholic's part as a 'Crusade'.

Crusade isn't really a contemporary term, so the distinctiopn doesn't really work very well. But aside from that, I don't think the Münster Anabaptists were good candidates for official recognition. They were too much of a wild-and-wooly fringe cult. The usual pattern was a different one, and I could see it happening if it comes about early enough. The Reformation in the beginning was a fairly unorganised affair with theological discoveries made right and left and very little agreement on anything. Leaders were taken under sympathetic states' wings and in the end, their ideas and ideals curiously began to coincide with the interests of their protectors. Take a fledgling Anabaptist theologian and put him somewhere not too small (to be reasonably safe) and not too big (to be easily overlooked), and you are halfway there. He won't sign the Confessio Augustana, but neither did a lot of the Reformed churches, and they survived in a number of places. Alt-Anabaptism could hang on as nothing more to the world than a funny flavour of Protestantism.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Crusade isn't really a contemporary term, so the distinctiopn doesn't really work very well. But aside from that, I don't think the Münster Anabaptists were good candidates for official recognition. They were too much of a wild-and-wooly fringe cult. The usual pattern was a different one, and I could see it happening if it comes about early enough. The Reformation in the beginning was a fairly unorganised affair with theological discoveries made right and left and very little agreement on anything. Leaders were taken under sympathetic states' wings and in the end, their ideas and ideals curiously began to coincide with the interests of their protectors. Take a fledgling Anabaptist theologian and put him somewhere not too small (to be reasonably safe) and not too big (to be easily overlooked), and you are halfway there. He won't sign the Confessio Augustana, but neither did a lot of the Reformed churches, and they survived in a number of places. Alt-Anabaptism could hang on as nothing more to the world than a funny flavour of Protestantism.

But it has done so, the Mennovits and Amish is bot Anababtists. The biggest difference is that pacifism doesn't become a integrated part of Anababtism.

But another question without the Münster "Commune" could we see Münsterland go Lutheran like Bremen and Magdeburg.
 
I posted an "Anabaptist England" suggestion in which adult baptism was tied in with coming of age, being able to bear arms, etc based on some Saxon cultural stuff I'd read.

The thread is around here somewhere.
 
Because calling a crusade on a the Anababtists, would make the other neighbouring (and more moderate) Protestant very worried.

Re: Point 2

The Albigensian Crusade was in the 13th century, while the Munster Anabaptists were in the 16th. It'd be a religious war, sure, but I'd be extremely reluctant to categorize any action on the Catholic's part as a 'Crusade'.
I'm sure the Protestants would join in. I don't see this as a 'Catholic' thing at all. Heck, the Lutherans would be more than happy to LEAD the thing.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I'm sure the Protestants would join in. I don't see this as a 'Catholic' thing at all. Heck, the Lutherans would be more than happy to LEAD the thing.

No they wouldn't because they didn't want a large Catholic dominated army close to their possesion, simply because they didn't want them to get ideas.
 
I recommend any interested parties read Leonard Verduin's Reformers and Their Stepchildren.

From that book, one learns the Anabaptists weren't interested in being an established church. Toleration was more than acceptable to them. (The state can have whatever idol it wants on the public square. We're happy meeting on an alley. Just don't force us to pay tribute to your idol. You're not going to get it. And we'll die before we pay it,) However, toleration was not acceptable to the sacralist power structure of the day.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I recommend any interested parties read Leonard Verduin's Reformers and Their Stepchildren.

From that book, one learns the Anabaptists weren't interested in being an established church. Toleration was more than acceptable to them. (The state can have whatever idol it wants on the public square. We're happy meeting on an alley. Just don't force us to pay tribute to your idol. You're not going to get it. And we'll die before we pay it,) However, toleration was not acceptable to the sacralist power structure of the day.

That was a later development, at first was Anababtist was quite militant, fanatic and intolerant (some quite unpleasant thing happened under their rule of Münster), but these tendencies died out, simply because they stood little chance against the military might of the more organised Lutheran, Calvinist and Catholics, and only the pacific and pleasant branch of the Anababtists survived.
 
I view Muenster as a case of PTSD run amok. Take a look at Verduin and you'll see the underpinnings of my position. One of their nicknames was Stabler or Staff Carriers.
That was a later development, at first was Anababtist was quite militant, fanatic and intolerant (some quite unpleasant thing happened under their rule of Münster), but these tendencies died out, simply because they stood little chance against the military might of the more organised Lutheran, Calvinist and Catholics, and only the pacific and pleasant branch of the Anababtists survived.
 
I think that the Anabaptists would have continued to be a "fringe: sect as they were rather against the idea of a "State" or official religion, were often hunted down and killed by authorities on both the Reformers (Lutheran, Calvinist, etc.) and the Roman Catholic church. Persecution started early on - likely around 1520 or so (been a LONG time since I studied this!). Probably the earliest Anabaptist theologian was Michael Sattler and he was killed in 1527, IIRC. Others, like Balthazar Hubmaier, John Hutter, etc., were usually charismatic and schismatic, with little or no long-term results. Hutter did, however, found what became the Hutterites. Another early leadser who survived, was Menno Simons, from northern Germany. His followers are the best-know of the Anabaptista, and still exist today - the MENNONITES. A sub-group, the Amish, split off from the Mennonites in Switzerland c. 1687 as a result of a combination personality clash and an attempt by Jacob Amman (from whom we get the word "Amish") to keep the church "pure" and refrain from worldliness.

Recommendations for reading/study: The Mennonites in Europe by John Horsch and The Bloody Theater of the Martyrs Mirror by Thielman J. van Braght.

Bobindelaware

Oh, yeah - I graduated from Eastern MENNONITE College (now University).
 
Top