March 25, 1525

After nine days in prison, most of the Zollikon Anabaptists gained their release and headed home. But the freedom came at a cost to the fledgling congregation there: they pledged that they would be obedient to Zwingli’s doctrines, cease baptizing, and make no more objections to infant baptism. They also needed to make payment of a silver mark for undergoing re-baptism, in compliance with the Council’s March 11 order. 

A clerk of the Zurich government recorded the statements of all the Anabaptist prisoners on March 25. A typical example follows: “Hans Hottinger, watchman, takes pleasure in Master Ulrich’s teachings and wishes to be obedient to my lords.”¹ This is the same Hans Hottinger who had visited the first Anabaptists placed in prison in early February and had relished telling the Zollikon Anabaptists that the prisoners had shown better knowledge of the Scriptures than Zwingli in their prison discussion with him about rebaptism. It is also the same Hottinger who, in February, had “said he did not at all enjoy Zwingli’s preaching” and thought “he has preached about the children like a rascal and a heretic.”² After his second interrogation in two months, Hottinger was now willing to state he would abandon his fraternity with Zwingli’s Anabaptist critics (though he would go back on that pledge within a matter of months).³

The entry for Fridli Schumacher was very similar. He had just been baptized in January by Hans Brötli, but now he agreed to submit to Zwingli’s doctrines. Even Jacob Hottinger, one of the first in Zollikon to begin baptizing others, and Hans Ockenfuss, the tailor who had been part of Conrad Grebel and Andreas Castelberger’s Zurich Bible study, agreed to obey the Council’s instructions and abandon Anabaptist activities.⁴

One prisoner, Valentin Gredig, who also agreed to abide by Zwingli’s teachings, had undergone an interrogation in prison that clerks recorded in greater detail than they did for the other prisoners. Interestingly, the record shows that authorities asked whether he believed that “a Christian may wield the sword or not.” This concern bears evidence that the Zurich authorities had gotten wind that the Anabaptists were pairing their teachings on baptism and congregational accountability with a teaching on non-resistance. Gredig confirmed their suspicion: the clerk recorded that Gredig replied, “Leave it to God;” as for Gredig himself, he “would never take it into his power.”⁵ Though Gredig gave up on Anabaptism, his testimony in prison indicates that pacifism was present in the convictions of common Anabaptist converts early on; it was not just a belief unique to Grebel’s circle when they admonished Thomas Müntzer against taking up the sword.

A new name also appeared in the record of recantations on this day: a “Brother Michael in the white cloak.” The clerks recorded: “He wants to stay away from rebaptism and is now so convinced that he confesses to have done wrong and wants to recant the doctrine that he preached in regard to baptism.”⁶ This is the first mention of Michael Sattler, a former Benedictine monk in the Black Forest, in Zurich sources. He had made his way to Zurich at some point in early 1525, most likely with his new wife Margaretha, and begun associating with Anabaptists enough to get brought into prison during the March crackdown. But it appears that his convictions about Anabaptist teachings were not yet strong enough to stay in prison for them. Being a foreigner, he was required to swear an oath⁷ to leave the canton upon his release. He headed back to the Black Forest region upon his release.⁸

Out of the nineteen who had been arrested on March 16, all but four promised to cease Anabaptist activities. Rutsch (Rudolf) Hottinger was one of those who chose to “persist,” as the clerk wrote, in his beliefs; he would “not admit that children should be baptized.” The clerk wrote down a comment that Rutsch likely gave as his reason: “What God has placed in his heart, no one may take from him.” Gabriel Geiger also “persists in his way,” a clerk recorded. “He is not his own, and what God commands him, that will he do.” Jörg Schad, the farmer who had admitted baptizing forty persons in the week before his arrest, also refused to give up his position, contending that children “should not be baptized until they have been instructed.”⁹ They were, nonetheless, still released with a warning that if they persisted in baptizing others or hindered infant baptism, they and their families would be banished.¹⁰

Finally, Felix Mantz and George Blaurock were also interviewed on the same day. But they refused to recant. “Felix Mantz,” wrote the clerk, “persists in his old opinion, will not soften, but rather [says that] if Master Ulrich writes on baptism, he will then write upon it as well.” For his part, Blaurock claimed that “if the heavenly Father calls him to baptize, then he will baptize.”¹¹ The Zurich Council kept Mantz in prison. Blaurock, on the other hand, received a prompt banishment back to his home town of Chur in the far eastern canton of Graubünden. The Council gave specific instructions for Blaurock and his wife to be placed in a boat and escorted to Chur. The Council also wanted their messenger to secure letters from the Chur authorities testifying that they would keep watch over Blaurock and keep him in their district.¹²

The Zurich government’s very selective use of banishment shows that leaders were reluctant to punish every Anabaptist baptizer with the full penalty that their earlier mandates had threatened. They likely hoped that the “second chance” that they gave to the Zollikon natives, though, would be counterbalanced by their implementation of banishment for Blaurock so that new participants in the Anabaptist movement would recognize that their families could pay a price for their participation; the Council was willing to enforce its threatened penalties if its forbearance did not work to bring them back into the fold of the territorial church. The examples of Blaurock’s banishment and Mantz’s prolonged imprisonment appears to have been largely effective at suppressing public Anabaptist evangelism. While individual Anabaptists continued to support one another through hospitality and clandestine worship services around Zollikon, surviving records bear no trace that they performed further baptisms. The recanter Michael Sattler, however, would spend the next few months formulating stronger convictions about Anabaptist teachings and would soon undertake serious risks to bring them back to Zurich in the fall of 1525.

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. Stellungnahme einzelner Täufer (Mar. 25, 1525), in Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 1, eds. Leonhard von Muralt & Walter Schmid (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1952), 73-74. ↩︎
2. Testimony of Hans Schärer (Feb. 18-25, 1525), in The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents, ed. Leland Harder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1985), 348. ↩︎
3. Harder, 546. ↩︎
4. Stellungnahme, Quellen, 73. ↩︎
5. Verhör von Valentin [Gredig] und Philipp Kym (Mar. 16-21, 1525), in Quellen, 68. ↩︎
6. Stellungnahme, Quellen, 73. ↩︎
7. Stellungnahme, Quellen, 73. ↩︎
8. John H. Yoder, The Legacy of Michael Sattler (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1973) 10. ↩︎
9. Stellungnahme, Quellen, 73. ↩︎
10. Urteil des Rates (Mar. 25, 1525), in Quellen, 74. ↩︎
11. Stellungnahme, Quellen, 73. ↩︎
12. Urteil des Rates (Mar. 25, 1525), in Quellen, 74-75. ↩︎