October 5-8, 1525

The opponents of the free-church movement netted a major haul during the week of October 5: three of the most outspoken initiators of Anabaptism in Zurich—Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, and Felix Mantz—had all converged in the hilly district of Grüningen outside of Zurich, and the bailiff of Grüningen managed to arrest two of them, while the third narrowly escaped. It was such a turn of events that these three men would show themselves so openly in public within a few days of each other that even the bailiff said—when he wrote to the Zurich Council about his arrests—“I was amazed at them…We had an extraordinary day.”¹

Like the day when dozens of early Anabaptists were arrested in Zollikon at the end of January, these arrests were precipitated by George Blaurock’s decision to claim the pulpit for himself in a village church on Sunday morning. Blaurock had made his way to Grüningen after preaching for several months in clandestine meetings in the countryside around St. Gall—where he had headed immediately after escaping from prison in Graubünden in July. But on this Sunday he came to the regular morning service at the parish church of Hinwil, where the parishioners were starting to gather. According to the testimonies that the bailiff later collected, Blaurock entered and said, “Whose place is this? If this is the place of God where the Word of God is proclaimed, I am a messenger from the Father to proclaim the Word of God.” The priest, Hans Brennwald, had not yet come to the sanctuary to conduct the service. When he arrived, Blaurock “stood there and preached,” while Brennwald decided to remain “silent and let him preach awhile.” But once Blaurock “got to baptism,” Brennwald “interrupted him, since it seemed necessary to him to reply.” Apparently, the laypeople were interested in hearing Blaurock further, since “a great murmuring arose in the church,” leading Brennwald to “shout for order.” Lacking success, Brennwald decided to leave the sanctuary and go searching for the bailiff at his home in a nearby town.²

The deputy bailiff, who was attending the church service, rose to seize Blaurock and lead him out of the service by force. But again, Blaurock’s supporters challenged the attempts to silence him, pointing out that the deputy bailiff had no orders that gave him the right to detain Blaurock. Meanwhile, Brennwald found the bailiff, Jörg Berger, and reported the commotion that was transpiring back at the church. “And so I hastily rode up there,” Berger recorded once he had a moment’s rest to recall the events.³

When he entered the Hinwil church, Berger found about 200 people listening to Blaurock. Berger mounted the pulpit, but Blaurock did not back down. He “stood beside me in the pulpit,” Berger wrote, and “made all kinds of arguments.” When Berger finally got Blaurock outside and put Blaurock under arrest, he sensed that the townspeople were sympathetic not toward his restoration of order, but toward Blaurock: “such a crowd followed him, young and old, truly remarkable,” he noted.⁴

Over the next two days, people who were sympathetic to Blaurock’s message approached Berger, seeking permission to gather to study the Word in the neighboring town of Betzholz. Berger “gathered them together in a big group and asked them kindly not to baptize anymore and to desist.” The group’s spokesmen replied that “they would compel no one” to rebaptism, but “if someone asked for it they would baptize him and not desist from it until they could be corrected on the basis of the Holy Scriptures.”⁵

Whether Berger agreed to tolerate the meeting is not clear from his report. But the meeting went forward on Wednesday, and Berger and his deputy attended. So it seems that some understanding had been reached that a gathering could take place under his watch. Since Berger reported that “many people” came, and it took place on an open field, it also seems to indicate that Anabaptists thought they would not be in danger by participating. But while Berger and his deputy were there, they were surprised to witness Conrad Grebel and Felix Mantz arrive. “[W]e thereupon immediately recognized both of them…We took counsel and I rode to nearby Ottikon and gathered as many men as I could find and sent them back to the deputy bailiff” to assist him in capturing the pair, while Berger himself helped to transport Blaurock onward to prison.⁶ Apparently, Grebel and Mantz’s attendance changed Berger’s perception of the nature of the meeting, and Berger believed he’d win the Zurich Council’s favor by detaining these spokesmen. 

Grebel had been successfully eluding authorities for several months while he sought to convince people in the Grüningen region of his conviction that reform of the church’s practice of baptism was a key for successful church renewal. Meanwhile, Mantz had been spending his time in a Zurich prison ever since he had been transported there from Graubünden in July. Released just the day before, on October 7, he apparently headed straight for Grüningen, where he must have known that Grebel was present and could help arrange lodging for him. But Mantz’s freedom would not last long. Grebel and he decided to join the Betzholz meeting—perhaps believing that they would not be molested there. But when Bailiff Berger’s reinforcements arrived from Ottikon to meet with the deputy bailiff, they moved in on the assembly to seize Grebel and Mantz.

Mantz managed to escape through the crowd, but he would be able to elude authorities for just three weeks. He was rediscovered on October 31 and brought to the same prison where Grebel and Blaurock now sat—in the Castle of Grüningen, the same castle that had once been Grebel’s childhood home when his father held the position of bailiff.⁷

About This Series

This post is part of a series entitled “The Reformation at 500: Timeline of the Free-Church Movement.” Click here for more information on this series.

Featured image courtesy of the Wick’sche Sammlung, ca. 1575, Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Ms. F 23, fol. 294.

1. Letter of Landvogt Berger of Grüningen to the Zurich Council (Grüningen, Oct. 8, 1525), in The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents, ed. Leland Harder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1985), 430; Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 1, eds. Leonhard von Muralt & Walter Schmid (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1952), 109-11. ↩︎
2. Harder, Sources, 429-30. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 430. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Ibid. ↩︎
6. Ibid. ↩︎
7. Landvogt Jörg Berger zu Grüningen an den Rat von Zürich (Oct 31, 1525), Muralt & Schmid, Quellen, 115-16; Harder, 432. ↩︎