Mid-February, 1525

Hans (Johannes) Brötli and Wilhelm Reublin were two of the few individuals that the Zurich town council singled out for banishment in its first order after the First Disputation on Baptism. Brötli used the eight days he had to leave the canton to rally the people of Zollikon to intimate congregational life, baptizing several as adults and celebrating the Lord’s Supper in the evenings. Then he, his wife, and child set out with Reublin into exile, heading north to the canton of Schaffhausen.

After about a week, Brötli wrote a letter back to Fridli Schumacher, whom he had baptized, and the rest of the “dear brothers in Christ at Zollikon.” He followed with a second letter a week or two later. His family had found a safe place to stay in the northern Swiss town of Hallau, he reported. But the journey there involved some fearsome moments: “I often slipped on the way but did not fall,” Brötli recounted. “Yes, yes, when we approached Eglisau [a town on the banks of the Rhine River], Wilhelm and I had considered our lives lost. But I believe God averted it. We strayed from the right road and wandered, lost half of that day in brush and wilds, but God willed it thus. At night we came to some devout people.”¹ God’s physical protection through the journey culminated in the provision of spiritual fellowship.

Brötli’s first letter’s opening strikingly resembled Paul’s and Peter’s epistles to the New Testament churches. He began by identifying himself, “a servant of Jesus Christ, called to proclaim the gospel of Christ through the will of God the Father, to the devout Christians and the called of God in the Christian congregation of Zollikon, grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” By aligning his identity so closely with the apostles, Brötli was likely appreciating that his exile had thrust him into the role of a traveling apostle for a revived New Testament-model church. He continued by identifying with Paul’s teaching ministry and “tentmaking”, as well: “You know, dear brethren, how while I was with you I proclaimed to you the Word of God faithfully, clearly, simply, and did not treat it like the untrustworthy innkeepers who pour water into the wine. You know too how I would have liked to live among you, to work with my hands and to be a burden to none.” He assured the congregation that he remained steadfast in the convictions he expressed in Zollikon and that he considered it joy (as James had admonished in his epistle) to face the trails of being “driven away from you for the sake of the truth,” knowing it was “according to the will of God.” “Yes, yes,” he wrote, “I did not weep when I went away from you, but sang.”²

Brötli also recounted that he and Reublin journeyed to the city of Schaffhausen where they met Conrad Grebel and had supper with Sebastien Hoffmeister and Sebastian Meyer, both former Franciscan monks who had embraced evangelical doctrines. Hoffmeister was the lead pastor for Schaffhausen and was showing inclinations toward the Anabaptist position on baptism. Brötli wrote that he was “of one mind with us regarding baptism” and prayed that he would “improve in all things.”³ Indeed, Balthasar Hubmaier, pastor in nearby Waldshut, later testified that Hoffmeister wrote him in February to say that he would advocate for adult baptism before the Schaffhausen town council, arguing that Zwingli “does not proceed in accordance with the truth of the gospel if he wants the little children to be baptized.” He affirmed Hubmaier in his reforms at Waldshut, writing, “you do what is exactly Christian when you reintroduce the true baptism of Christ that has been neglected for so long.”⁴ Meyer served as associate pastor under Hoffmeister. But both eventually realigned with Zwingli and became leaders of churches in Zurich and Bern that instituted Reformed doctrine.⁵ For the time being, however, it seemed that Anabaptism was gaining a favorable hearing in the canton of Schaffhausen. Brötli preached in Hallau in February, and the cantonal government became alarmed after hearing that almost the entire town had been baptized by him.⁶

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. Hans Brötli, Letter to Fridli Schumacher and other Brethren (Hallau, between Feb. 5 and 19), in The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents, ed. Leland Harder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1985), 351. ↩︎
2. Ibid., 350. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 351. ↩︎
4. Harder, 712 fn. 11. ↩︎
5. Ibid., 544-45, 712 fn. 10. ↩︎
6. Ibid., 712 fn. 7 & 8; Christian Neff, “Brötli, Johannes (before 1494-1528),” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (1953), at https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Br%C3%B6tli,_Johannes_(before_1494-1528). ↩︎