One fact(?) mentioned in
Goncharenko's dissertation was that Anabaptists had an average lifespan of
eighteen months after baptism, i.e. after a year and a half after accepting
believer's baptism in the Anabaptist community the baptizand would be martyred.[1]
He gave no reference, which is no surprise since I have heard this
"fact" cited occasionally but never with any reference. In a
wikiality world, I suspect I could impart truth to it by citing Goncharenko in
Wikipedia.
This is one of those anecdotes
that is shared to highlight the Anabaptists as being the persecuted church. It
is supposed to be so hard to believe because we don't realize the extent of the
persecutions. Maybe I am overly critical but the uncited Anabaptist lifespan
may actually be too hard to believe.
I have my
doubts for three reasons. The first is that I've yet to find a credible source
for this fact. The search for this fact is obscured since mentions of it don’t
point back to any reference. This should raise questions in the historian’s mind
because it is no unique incident for “facts” to work their way into the body of
knowledge on a subject.
One
instance of this is the immersion baptism of Menno Simons. For many years it
had been believed that Menno practiced baptism by immersion. John Horsch traced
references to this “fact” back to one translation of a key text written by
Menno but found that the translation suggesting Menno baptized by immersion was
spurious and artificially inserted into the text.[2]
Unfortunately, I cannot yet begin such a search since I cannot find any
references to trace. I ask my readers’ assistance if you come across any
citations. It may be that, if given a starting point, I can trace this back to
a credible, verifiable source. It is also possible that I may find this to be a
spurious insertion into our “knowledge” of the first generation of the
Anabaptists.
The
second reason is that it is no secret that this “fact” serves a polemical
purpose of validating the Anabaptists as the persecuted church. Given Christ’s
warning that the church would suffer for his name sake, acknowledging the
persecution of the Anabaptists serves to validate them as the true church of
Christ. Any hyperbole on this point would of course heighten the Anabaptist
role as the church persecuted. To say that baptism was a veritable death
sentence in the sixteenth century is too convenient an aid to Anabaptist
polemics to not warrant a staid measure of scrutiny.
The
third reason regards the manner by which we would come upon information about
the post-baptismal lifespans of Anabaptists. While the first two reasons cannot
prove against the “fact” but only prove it unwarranted, this third reason
provides an explanation as to how such an error could be developed. The
knowledge that we would be able to gather on the deaths of Anabaptists favors
overrepresentation of those with shorter lifespans after baptism.
This
overrepresentation arises in two ways, both based in the accessibility of
records concerning Anabaptist martyrdom. The major figures with whom we are
familiar today, primarily writing teachers in the church but also prominent
leaders with no written legacy, were those who were prominent in their day
also. Because of that prominence the biographical details including the
accounts of their martyrdom are well known. It is that same prominence that
would have made them higher priority targets for persecutors. So, the same
prominence that resulted in these leaders’ higher rate of persecution also
resulted in a higher availability off accounts of their martyrdom, which is to
say that the Anabaptists who faced more acute persecution were those of whom we
have more records. So, the records would be skewed toward a nonrepresentative
sampling of baptized believers. The Anabaptists who were less prominent were under
the radar (insert appropriate 16th-century metaphor here–“beyond the
nostrils of the hounds”?) of the authorities, thus living longer and
consequently leaving less records of their longer post-baptismal lifespans.
The
second way is similar but not in regards to prominence. Many of the records we
have of individual Anabaptists comes from trial records. These trials were
often seeking execution. So, those Anabaptists whose lives were cut short by
persecution made it into the records while those who died of natural causes
would have been far more likely to not have made it into the record as being
Anabaptists. The Nicodemism under which some Anabaptists lived, particularly
among the followers of David Joris, compounded this problem.[3]
So again, it is the Anabaptists who were martyred who are overrepresented while
those whose longer lives would extend the eighteen month average lifespan are
those who would be underrepresented in calculating that number.
If
we were to find a credible source for this eighteen month lifespan, the most it
could say is that it was among those of whom we have record that the average
post-baptismal lifespan was eighteen months while recognizing that this cannot
take into account those of whom we have no record, whose lives were likely
considerably longer and would thus redefine the statistic.
Two
final notes: I don’t mean to pick on Goncharenko, especially since I was less
than generous in my previous review. He only cites this fact that seems to
circulate without proper credibility. For the sake of clearing his name as a
sole transgressor, here is another example of someone mentioning the fact
without citation:
Also,
I may update this post sometime in the future. Someone might find a citation I
can follow that opens the path to begin following this line of investigation. I
might find it myself. I might also take some time to crunch some numbers out of
the Martyr’s Mirror and various biographies I have laying around.
Perhaps this calculation will confirm the number. Today, however, I only wish
to raise the warning against accepting “common knowledge” to readily. I’m more
interested in what really happened in the Radical Reformation than in polemical
expediency.
[1]149n in the
dissertation, but I don't know where it is in the book. Perhaps the fourteenth
footnote in the last chapter like it is in the dissertation.
[2]John Horsch,
“Did Menno Simons Practice Baptism by Immersion?” Mennonite Quarterly Review
1, no. 1 (Jan. 1927): 54-56.
[3]J. Denny
Weaver, Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin
and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism, 2nd ed.
(Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 2005), 138.
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