March 8-15, 1525

It was an eventful week among the vibrant Zollikon congregation of Anabaptists, as members reported that eighty new people had submitted themselves to baptism. The congregation was meeting frequently, sharing in the Lord’s Supper each time and reading the Scriptures in the vernacular for all to understand.¹

On March 8—a Wednesday—Anabaptists gathered outside by a lake in the orchard of the Murer family to partake in the Lord’s Supper together, and indication that the gathering might have grown too large for their home.² And on the following Sunday, March 12, a farmer named Jörg Schad baptized about 40 people from Zollikon as well as two other towns: some had come from Küsnacht, a nearby village on the banks of Lake Zurich, but others had travelled all the way from Höngg, which was ten kilometers away. They had likely been supporters of believers’ baptism earlier, due to Simon Stumpf’s prior pastorate in their parish.³

George Blaurock’s preaching in the prior weeks likely drew more people to meetings at Zollikon. But when the Zurich Council heard of his preaching and baptizing after his release from prison, it moved to rearrest him, considering him to have reneged on his pledge of peaceful conduct before his release from prison.⁴

In the absence of Brötli and Blaurock, numerous men carried out baptisms over the course of this week, according to the testimony of members who were later arrested. It seems that simply on the authority of being baptized into Peter’s “holy priesthood,”⁵ some felt empowered by the Spirit to be the conduits of further baptisms. Notably, a tailor from the Black Forest apprenticing in Zollikon, named Hans Bichter, later admitted to baptizing about 30 people during this week. Hans Ockenfuss admitted to authorities that he had baptized Jacob Hottinger Jr. (whose father had baptized Ockenfuss a few weeks before), and Jacob Jr. affirmed that he then baptized seven individuals in the following days.⁶

The Zurich Council became alarmed at news of the growing gatherings in Zollikon. On March 11, the Council issued a mandate that “anyone who had let himself be baptized since the affair in the Augustine monastery was to be fined a silver mark, and anyone who would in the future let himself be baptized was to be expelled immediately with wife and children.”⁷ The Council did not want to rely merely on issuing a declaration to be distributed on paper, so it even sent several officers to Zollikon to warn the “baptists” in person and read the declaration aloud before the townspeople.⁸ By the next week, enforcement began.

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. Verhör von Jacob Hottinger, Hans Bichter, und Hans Oggenfuss, Mar. 16-25, 1525 (No. 56), in Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz, vol. 1, eds. Leonhard von Muralt & Walter Schmid (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1952), 60; Fritz Blanke, Brothers in Christ: The History of the Oldest Anabaptist Congregation (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1961), 53; Werner O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 44. ↩︎
2. Testimony of Jacob Hottinger, Mar. 16-25, 1525 (No. 56), in Quellen, 64. ↩︎
3. Verhör von Jörg Schad and Valentine Gredig (No. 55, Mar. 16-25, 1525), in Quellen, 63; Blanke, Brothers in Christ, 54. ↩︎
4. Christian Neff, “Blaurock, Georg (ca. 1492-1529),” (1953), Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, at https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Blaurock,_Georg_(ca._1492-1529). ↩︎
5. I Peter 2: 5-9. ↩︎
6. Verhör von Jacob Hottinger, Hans Bichter, und Hans Oggenfuss, Mar. 16-25, 1525 (No. 56), in Quellen, 60-61. ↩︎
7. Beschluss des Rates (March 11, 1525) (No. 51), in Quellen, 60-61, trans. Christian Neff, in “Blaurock, Georg,” at https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Blaurock,_Georg_(ca._1492-1529). ↩︎
8. Beschluss des Rates (March 11, 1525) (No. 52), in Quellen, 61. ↩︎