What was going on down in Nicolsburg?

As a beginning student of Anabaptism (an maybe I still really am and don’t realize how far I’ve yet to go) I always got confused over one of many things. What was going on down in Nicolsburg? As a student at a Baptist institution I was of course exposed to Balthasar Hübmaier with abnormal weight. What I remember thinking then of that important time in Hübmaier’s career was that he went down there, there was a controversy, Hübmaier is martyred, something else happened, add salt, shake well and out popped Hutterites. I knew it started with Hübmaier and ended with Hutterites but the road between the two was unclear. Something drastic must have happened in the innards of the Moravian mechanism that took a magisterial, sword-bearing input yet produced a separatist, pacifist, communitarian output.

So, with bravado unbecoming of my inexperience, I have decided to make a chart illustrating the path from Nicolsburg to Jacob Hutter. At about Hutter’s arrival, things get fissiparous and the Austerlitz group is splintered, with one group following Hutter and adopting his name as their own. Your screen, dear reader, is probably not big enough to contain such a chart; so, I will take you up to the arrival of Hutter and at least one piece of the puzzle should be clearer (or so I hope).

Here’s a narrative to accompany the chart. After Hübmaier’s recantation in Zürich, he left for Moravia via Augsburg, arriving in Nicolsburg in July 1526. Hübmaier began a magisterial Anabaptist reformation along the lines of that of Waldshut, befriending the local lords, the Liechtensteins. He had great success, performing a great number of baptisms subject to possible exaggeration. The advancement of his reformation among the indigenous population was augmented by the arrival of refugees.

There were tension between the locals and the refugees. The refugees, led by Jacob Wiedemann, were not supported by a magisterial reformation and preferred to exist as a separatist congregation. Accordingly, they began to hold their own meetings and as a matter of survival began to advocate mutual aid. This mutual aid was not yet developed into the more communalistic communitarianism for which the later Hutterites would be known.

Hübmaier was reforming a city. Wiedemann was with the refugees dissenting. And then there’s Hut. What had been an internal difference erupted into tract warfare. Hans Hut sided with Wiedemann and the refugees and began a campaign against Hübmaier. Hübmaier matched volleys by his writings against Hut. What began as a debate over separatism and the corollary of participation in the magistracy was turned to the issue of pacifism.[1] Although Hut left town for Vienna in June 1527 and soon thereafter martyred and in July Hübmaier was given up to the Hapsburg authorities, in whose hands he was martyred, the two parties were now irreconcilable. The positions they held on the question of pacifism became their identifying mark; Hübmaier’s congregation became known as the Schwertler (sword-bearers) and the dissenting group that remained under Wiedemann’s leadership became known as the Stäblers (staff-bearers).

The Schwertler were dissipated by persecutions in 1535 and have not been of much interest to scholars. The Stäbler were forced from Nicolsburg during the Spring of 1528 by the Lords who favored the magisterial reformation that had been Hübmaier’s legacy. They ended up in Austerlitz where their practice of mutual aid was radicalized into communalism. This group was enlarged by even more refugees, among whom differences of ideas were imported—differences that would lead to later fractionalization. One of the immigrants was Hutter, who would go on to lead one of these groups that would become known as the Hutterites.

If four paragraphs isn’t concise enough a narrative, let me try again. Hübmaier founded an Anabaptist church in Nicolsburg. Some of the church members wanted to be pacifists. The pacifists were kicked out of town and went to Austerlitz and formed a communitarian church. Many groups came out of that group, including the Hutterites.

So, I hope that clears up some of that little knot in Anabaptist history. I hope that it helps at least one person understand more clearly what was going on down there in Nicolsburg. At least the way my mind works, having things in chart format helps me understand it.

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[1]Hut was known for his apocalypticism, which was ardent enough to earn him the rebuke of Denck at the Martyrs’ synod of August 1527. Hut there agreed to place his apocalypticism at the periphery of his preaching. Such apocalypticism is often associated among the radicals with violence, for it was taught by some that the end of days was to be accompanied by the wrathful execution of God’s judgment of the unbelievers by the faithful church of God.  On the contrary, Hut’s end times fervency was pacifistic. He predicted that that judgment would come at the hands of the godless Turks on behalf of the faithful remnant.