A Sattler Reading Guide

One of the disadvantages of being outside of an academic institution for the time being is not having a guide to comb through the literature on a particular subject. In the case of my recent reading of the comments made on Snyder’s biography, it is important to read certain items in a certain order. Sometimes this is chronological so that the student can see the development of the scholarship, but at other times this is best done thematically, moving from the broader subject to finer details and with an emphasis on dealing with the primary sources sooner rather than later.

So, if anyone has a care to read up on Michael Sattler fairly extensively, I submit an annotated bibliography that should serve as a guide. The first list goes from general introduction to primary sources to the development of later biography, with contingent issues. I advise reading those item in the order they are presented. The second list contains work of lesser immediate value and works outside of English. This bibliography is almost exhaustive, but there are likely other little biographies, essay sections, book chapters or even whole works of which I may be unaware. I will update this post as I find them. I also left out the many republications of Schleitheim because it is everywhere. Seriously.

Haas, Martin. “Michael Sattler: On the Way to Anabaptist Separation.” In Profiles of Radical Reformers, ed. Hans-Jürgen Görtz 132-143. Kitchener, Ontario: Herald, 1982.

Bossert, Gustav, Jr., Harold Stauffer Bender and C. Arnold Snyder. “Sattler, Michael (d. 1527).” Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, ed. Cornelius John Dyck. Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1989.

        These two items will provide enough of a biography to provide a framework for placing the writings into context.

Williams, George H. and Angel M. Mergal, eds. “The Trial and Martyrdom of Michael Sattler.” In Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, 136-144. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957.

Bossert, Gustav, Jr. “Michael Sattler’s Trial and Martyrdom in 1527.” MQR 25, no. 3 (July 1951): 201-218.

Snyder, C. Arnold. “Rottenberg Revisited: New Evidence Concerning the Trial of Michael Sattler.” MQR 54, no. 3    (Jul. 1980): 208-228.

        The trial of Sattler is prominent in the early Anabaptist narrative. It will introduce the primary source documents to follow.

Sattler, Michael. “Early Anabaptist Tract on Hermeneutics.” Ed. J. C Wenger. MQR 42, no. 1 (Jan. 1968): 26-44.

Yoder, John Howard. The Legacy of Michael Sattler. Classics of the Radical Reformation, Vol. 1. Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1973.

        Yoder mixes primary texts with biographical annotations. That biography acted as a foil to Snyder’s later work.

Snyder, C. Arnold. “Life of Michael Sattler Reconsidered.” MQR 52, no. 4 (Oct. 1978): 328-332.

Snyder, C. Arnold. “Revolution and the Swiss Brethren: The Case of Michael Sattler.” Church History 50, no. 3 (Sum. 1981): 276-287.

        Snyder would become the most prolific author on Sattler. These works set the way for his challenge to Yoder’s interpretation. The latter distilled the arguments from his dissertation of the same year.

Snyder, C. Arnold. The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, no. 27. Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1984.

        Snyder’s biography essentially attempts to demonstrate the influence of Sattler’s Benedictine past on his later Anabaptist theology, especially as revealed in Schleitheim.

Martin, Dennis D. “Monks, Mendicants and Anabaptists: Michael Sattler and the Benedictines Reconsidered.” MQR 60, no. 2 (Apr. 1986): 139-164.

Arnold, C. Arnold. “Michael Sattler, Benedictine: Dennis Martin’s Objections Reconsidered.” MQR 61, no. 3 (July 1987): 262-279.

Fast, Heinhold. “Michael Sattler’s Baptism: Some Comments.” MQR 30, no. 3 (July, 1986): 364-373.

Snyder, C. Arnold. “Michael Sattler’s Baptism: Some Comments in Reply to Heinhold Fast.” MQR 62, no. 4 (Oct. 1988): 496-506.

        Two challenges came from Snyder’s biography. Fast rejected the extent of a  connection that Sattler had that may have localized Sattler’s Anabaptist identity. Martin saw many of Snyder’s claims as too circumstantial. Snyder responded to both in defense of his original claims.

Snyder, C. Arnold. “The Influence of the Schleitheim Articles on the Anabaptist Movement.” MQR 63, no. 4 (Oct. 1989): 323-344.

        While not directly about Sattler, this article attempts to show that the Benedictine influence on Sattler was mediated to the rest of Anabaptism via Schleitheim.

Here are the rest of the works on Sattler that I have in my bibliography:

Augsburger, Myron S. “Michael Sattler (d 1527): Theologian of the Swiss Brethren Movement.” Th.D. diss., Richmond, Virginia, Union Theological Seminary, 1965.

_________. “Michael Sattler (d 1527): Theologian of the Swiss Brethren Movement.” MQR 40, no. 3 (July 1966): 238-239

        Simply a report on the findings of Augsburger’s dissertation.

Baecher, Claude. L'Affair Sattler. Editions Sator-Mennonites, 1990.

Depperman, Klaus. "Michael Sattler: Radikaler Reformator, Pazifest, Märtyrer." Mennonitisches Geschichtesblätter 47/48 (1990/1991): 8-23.

Estep, William Roscoe, Jr., “A Superlative Witness.” In The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism, 3^rd ed., 57-75. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1996.

Haas, Martin. “Michael Sattler: Auf dem Weg in die Täuferische Absonderung.” In Radikale Reformatoren, 115-124. Munich: Beck, 1978.

        The German original from which the previously mention Haas item was translated.

Köhler, Walther ed. Brüderliche Vereinigung etzlicher Kinder Gottessieben Artikel betreffend, Item ein Sendbrief Michael Sattlers an eine Gemeine Gottes samt seinem Martyrium. In “Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation.” Leipzig, 1909.

Moore, John Allen. Anabaptist Portraits. Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1984.

        There is a chapter in here on Sattler, but the book is not in my possession; so, I don’t know what the page numbers are.

Mühleisen, Hans-Otto. “Michael Sattler (ca. 1490-1527): Leben aus den Quellen–Treue zu sich Selbst.” Mennonitisches Geschichtesblätter 61 (2004): 31-48.

Seguy, Jean. “Sattler et Loyola: Ou Deux Formes de Radicalisme Religieux au XVI° Siécle.” In The Origins and Characteristics of Anabaptism, ed. Marc Leinhard, 105-125. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977.

Snyder, C. Arnold. “The Life and Though of Michael Sattler, Anabaptist.” Ph.D. diss., McMaster University, 1981.

        The dissertation that was later revised and published as The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler.

Spitta, Friedrich. “Michael Sattler als Dichter.” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 35 (1914): 393-402.

Stricker, Hans. “Michael Sattler als Verfasser der Schleitheimer Artikel.” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter 21 (1964): 15-18.

Veesenmeyer, Gustav. “Von Michael Sattler.” Staudlin und Vater’s Kirchenhistorische Archiv (1826): 476.

On Snyder and Sattler, Again.

When reviewing C. Arnold Snyder’s biography of Michael Sattler,[1] I wrote, “It [Snyder’s argument to setup the relationship of Sattler’s Benedictine past to is later Anabaptism] is like a three-legged stool in that taking out one leg will tip over the stool but it is also unlike a three-legged stool in that there are far more than three legs.”[2] In that review I also summarized the subsequent debate with Heinhold Fast regarding baptism. Now I wish to similarly summarize, although more briefly, the debate with Dennis D. Martin, whose objections were much broader.

Martin’s article, “Monks, Mendicants and Anabaptists,”[3] in general agrees with my assessment given above, comes from Martin’s background of scholarship in Medieval Monasticism. Looking at the categories of sola scriptura, “Practical Christocentrism” (i.e. discipleship), soteriology, and sectarianism, Martin repeatedly gives the cases that although Sattler could have gotten some of those ideas from the sources to which Snyder ascribed in his reconstruction of the evidential silence, those themes had other possible origins of influence on Sattler. For instance, Sattler’s biblicism need not have been learned in the Scriptorium of St. Peter’s in the Black Forest since it could have also been picked up from the Protestants. Martin then concludes to say that Snyder’s arguments are streams of plausibilities that added together have the statistical effect of being implausible.[4] At best, if Snyder did not successfully demonstrate the direct influence of Sattler’s monasticism on his Anabaptism, then, Martin concluded, the best Snyder could show is the parallels between the two theologies, which would be a parallel that had already been accepted as a foregone conclusion.[5]

The real issue seems to me to be about methodology. Martin lamented, “[T]he North American thesis format emphasizes interpretation at the expense of diligent archival work.”[6] While Snyder’s biography attempted to reconstruct the silence of the evidence, Martin seems to have preferred not to conjecture too far into that silence. Snyder was himself aware of the difference of methodology, saying, “[N]o historian of the sixteenth century can avoid working with less than coercive evidence.”[7] Snyder is certainly correct to say this since even when evidence is available, the accuracy of that evidence is often in question, especially considering that much evidence from the period is stained with the polemical dyes of the debates in which they were composed. The matter then does not appear to be of whether it is appropriate to use non-coercive evidence but rather of how non-coercive may evidence be as a basis for interpretation.

Snyder did not help himself in his case by saying that he had a “strong suspicion” for one fact and a “lurking (and probably unprovable) suspicion of another.[8] He at the same point conceded the incompleteness of his archival searches but stated that further enquiry at a time of “requisite leisure and access” might provide valuable insight.[9] This is precisely the sort of methodology to which Martin objected at the outset. It is one thing to offer possible explanations for gaps in the evidence but it is quite another to build an entire framework of biographical interpretation on the assumption that one or the other of those explanations is true.

Snyder did tackle the objection that other sources may have influenced Sattler besides Benedictine monasticism. While he admits the possibility of other sources, he complained that Martin himself offered no constructive counter-thesis. Most tellingly, Snyder wrote, “[T]he burden of proof is on Martin to present either the historical or literary evidence leading to his counter hypothesis in the Sattler case.”[10] Again, the difference in methodology determines the way that each scholar is judging the others’ arguments. Snyder accused Martin of not offering a better counter thesis while Martin had no intention of offering such but only to show that Snyder’s interpretation was not necessarily warranted. Martin seems to have been happy with merely bringing archival sources to light and stating little more than the evidence suggested while Snyder insisted that an interpretation must be set forth; and if not then his must be accepted until a better interpretation is found.

Snyder’s interpretive framework does remain as the most viable working hypothesis on the source of those aspects of Sattler’s thinking, but Martin has shown that there is a great possibility for that working hypothesis to be undone. Snyder’s paradigm has extensive explanatory power if not concrete historical evidence. It could one day be substantiated beyond the circumstantial if new evidence arose but it remains equally susceptible to having the legs kicked out from under it by those same evidences that as of yet sit in historical silence.

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[1]The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, no. 27 (Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1984).

[2]http://wederdooper.blogspot.com/b/post-preview?token=AqezSjkBAAA.RXB9G-cXkE62_pe8CtiJNA.gR_Vazl021bEAfaWQiy0NA&postId=7745240353806073617&type=POST. According to the Google stat tracker, only six of my dear readers have read this. Go read it. Now. You’re not actually down here in the footnotes, are you?

[3]“Monks, Mendicants and Anabaptists: Michael Sattler and the Benedictines Reconsidered,” MQR 60, no. 2 (Apr. 1986): 139-164.

[4]Ibid., 162.

[5]Ibid.

[6]Ibid., 140n. It is worth noting that Martin’s dissertation was completed at a North American university, the University of Waterloo.

[7]“Michael Sattler, Benedictine: Dennis Martin's Objections Reconsidered,” MQR 61, no. 3 (July 1987): 263.

[8]Ibid., 269.

[9]Ibid.

[10]Ibid., 276.

Review of Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism, by J. Denny Weaver

Weaver, John Denny. Becoming Anabaptist: The Origin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism, 2^nd ed. Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 2005.

John Denny Weaver’s introduction to the Anabaptist tradition is a work with two primary emphases. He sought retell the narrative of the first generation of Anabaptists in the sixteenth century up to the death of Menno Simons and then to discuss the significance of that tradition in the contemporary context. As such, Weaver’s Anabaptism is not a history but also a continuing narrative as heirs of the tradition seek to live out their faith consistently with the principles developed over four hundred-fifty years ago.

The structure of the historical section is based on the polygenetic model of Anabaptist origins (168), covering the Swiss, South German/Moravian, and Low Countries lines. The telling of those stories is fairly standard fair, but Weaver did bring out several trends throughout that narrative. A recurring theme was the tendency toward giving a place to the disenfranchised (33, 46, 51, et al.). The general focus was on people and events, yet certain theological matters, e.g. community of goods and melchiorite Christology, received attention also.

Weaver did not tell the story of where Anabaptism went after these generations but rather skipped forward to the present day. His chief concern was to appropriate the meaning of the Anabaptist tradition for contemporary existence as the church in the world. Although Weaver fully embraced the polygenetic account as determinative for the historical origins of the movement, he nonetheless sought to go beyond that account and assign meaning to the movement with a greater sense of unity than that from which the historical diversity might draw attention (168). Also, Weaver does well to open the fountain of Anabaptism beyond those who come to the tradition by birthright (as Mennonites can claim a historical linkage) but also those from the outside who embrace the tradition. Both have a place in the continuing story of Anabaptism (161-163).

The Anabaptist Vision was the guideline for Weaver’s own vision of the central characteristics of Anabaptism. Weaver went on to put his own spin on the Vision, going beyond Bender’s three-part schema of discipleship, ecclesiology, and the love ethic characterized by nonresistance. While Bender would later refine the Vision to just discipleship,[1] Weaver turned that discipleship, following Jesus, toward nearly being synonymous with nonresistance. He wrote, “Discipleship—Jesus as ethical authority—received a specific application in the _rejection of violence and the sword . . .. The voluntary community founded on discipleship to Jesus is perforce a peace church that rejects the sword of war—as Jesus did” (170). Weaver did highlight other distinctives, such as swearing of oaths, but the remainder of his discussion of the meaning of Anabaptism placed pacifism and nonresistance at the fore.

That nonresistance is played out within the Anabaptist conception of ecclesiology. That ecclesiology describes a church that is separated from society–sometimes antagonistically and at other times is a peaceful coexistence that Weaver terms “dualism.” These two modes of relating to the state is born out of Weaver’s understanding, following Gerald Biesecker-Mast,[2] of the early Anabaptist tension between maintaining a dualistic relationship or an antagonism with the state. Just as Anabaptism has historically taken various “manifestations and expressions (176), so also must current outworkings take various stances on dualism and antagonism within particular contexts (204). The general rule, Weave described, is that “the church in benign and tolerant situations should pursue the more antagonistic strategy” (205).

Weaver constructed his idea of discipleship with its focus on pacifism as a way of following Jesus. Following Jesus, for Weaver, is to “loop back” to Jesus (177), which is to constantly return to the narrative of Jesus in matters of ethics. The Anabaptist biblicism in history was to read Scripture as the “source for the life and teaching of Jesus” (160). Beyond this, however, Weaver tended to ignore the biblicism that was characteristic especially of the early Swiss Anabaptists. It becomes not altogether clear whether the move of viewing Scripture as the means to knowing the story of Jesus is a move that instead justifies downplaying the biblical account of Christ in favor of “looping back” to a Jesus molded in the Anabaptist image. Weaver’s treatment of the exhortations to turn the other cheek and to go the second mile are reinterpreted not as mere nonresistance but as means of empowering the oppressed, who by these actions actually call attention to the inequality being imposed by the oppressor (182-184). Giving both the cloak and the coat as payment of a debt results in a nakedness that does not shame the one who is naked but rather the one to whom the debt was owed for having caused the nakedness by his unjust demand.

The book concludes with an essay on interpretation, which is essentially a response to C. Arnold Snyder’s interpretation of the core of Anabaptist theology.[3] Snyder had identified the core of Anabaptism in three categories, areas of agreement with creedal orthodoxy, participation in the broader Reformation movement, and tenets exclusive to Anabaptism. Weaver gave multiple arguments against Snyder’s interpretative schema. He rejected Snyder’s starting point of identifying the core of Anabaptism with the strands of Christendom that came before it. For Weaver the more appropriate stating point was the differences with Christendom. Among them was pacifism, which, as the prominent characteristic of Weaver’s identification, he pointed out Snyder had omitted from the category of uniquely Anabaptist traits.

Weaver’s preference for the core of Anabaptism was the acceptance of the authority of the life and teachings of Jesus, i.e. discipleship (230). In this he shows his affinity for Bender’s Vision. The implications of both Bender’s Vision and Weaver’s core are a voluntary ecclesiology and nonviolence. The difference between Bender and Weaver is the prominence Weaver gave to nonviolence.

The historical sections of the book serve as a sufficient introduction to the movement, but the later sections do not serve this purpose as well. They are more imbedded in contemporary debate over Mennonite identity that do not give a balanced enough perspective for readers at an introductory level, especially for those coming from an outside perspective. However, they do play an important role in viewing that debate when read in correspondence with the other perspectives.

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[1]Harold Stauffer Bender, “The Anabaptist Theology of Discipleship,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 24, no. 1 (Jan. 1950): 25-32.

[2]“Anabaptist Separation and Arguments Against the Sword in the Schleitheim ‘Brotherly Union,’” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74, no. 3 (July 2000): 381-401.

[3]Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora, 1995).; “Beyond Polygenesis: Recovering the Unity and Diversity of Anabaptist Theology,” in Essays in Anabaptist Theology, ed. H. Wayne Pipkin. Text Reader Series 5 (Elkhart, Indiana: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1994), 1-33. Weaver mistakenly referred to the latter text as “later” (224).

Review of The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler, by C. Arnold Snyder

Snyder, C. Arnold. The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, no. 27. Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1984.

            The primary aim of Snyder’s work, originally his doctoral dissertation,[1] is to set out a new paradigm for Michael Sattler’s biography and a new interpretation of Sattler’s theological influences. Previous works had not critically attempted to put forward a detailed analysis of the source material in order to arrive at firm conclusion of biographical details. Snyder did not overturn all of the details he looked into but many of the details from the previous paradigm were challenged.

            Snyder’s new paradigm describes Sattler’s life as follows. Having become a prior at St. Peter’s monastery, Sattler left the monastery when it was overrun during the peasant’s revolt in May of 1525, likely having accepted their critiques of monastic abuses. Sattler then become what might be called an Anabaptist seeker, with but not of the Anabaptists and fielding the questions raised within himself. As such a seeker, he attended the November 1525 disputation in Zürich but was still not committed to the Anabaptist cause. Snyder concluded that Sattler became involved, working as a weaver, with the Anabaptists of the Unterland, north of Zurich. He finally committed to Anabaptism, accepting baptism, in the Summer of 1526. After acting as an ardent yet amiable apologist for Anabaptism in Strasbourg later that year, Sattler headed the Schleitheim conference in February 1527, which yielded the confession bearing that name. Snyder lastly recites the already well-attested trial and execution account.

            Further looking into Sattler’s thought, Snyder found traces of Benedictine influence in Sattler’s Anabaptist theological formulations. Though Snyder cautiously did not describe the whole of Sattler’s thought as having arisen from his monastic background, he does strongly posit the parallels between Sattler’s distinctive form of Anabaptism, especially against the Zürich Oberland group of Grebel and Mantz. Snyder drew stark differences between the Anabaptists north of Zürich and those of the south Zürich Oberland Anabaptists. The former he viewed as more willing to follow the state-church model until persecution precluded that possibility. The latter had far more separatist tendencies.

            The separatist model of Anabaptism that Sattler taught, then, Snyder explains as having resulted from his application of the Benedictine rule of separation from the world into an Anabaptist framework. Snyder also saw similarities with the stress of the nachfolge and imitatio Christi themes. There is some attribution to non-Benedictine sources for Sattler’s thought, however, for Snyder viewed the early Anabaptists as responsible for Sattler’s understanding of the believer not as one headed toward righteousness as a viator but as one who is immediately made righteous as sancti (166).

            The historical groundwork that Snyder has provided is appreciated but the journey from historical evidence to conclusions is not as firm as Snyder seems to present it. Snyder often states his conclusions as “obvious” and “clear,” even if they rest on not entirely certain ground. The entire paradigm has the feeling of being able to be disassembled at the dismissal of only a few pieces of evidences after further research or at the introduction of even the slightest bit of new, contradicting research. It is like a three-legged stool in that taking out one leg will tip over the stool but it is also unlike a three-legged stool in that there are far more than three legs. There may be better interpretation should new evidence be brought forward but the unfortunate case is that sources are not extensive. Though Snyder’s conclusion might not be as certain as he suggests, his paradigm does appear to be the most competent interpretation of the available data.

            Snyder’s evaluation of Sattler’s theological thought primarily asks the question of influence. Investigations into key areas of Sattler’s thought lead Snyder to conclude that Sattler incorporated elements from monasticism, Protestantism and earlier Swiss Anabaptism. Snyder concluded that Sattler’s Benedictine past was the essential distinctive driving Sattler’s unique brand of Anabaptism and other elements were incorporated insofar as they were consistent with that monastic heritage (197, 199).

            While Snyder does draw clear parallels between Sattler’s thought and its historical antecedents, Snyder might be too trusting of the assumption that historical precedence indicates theological influence by appearing too eager to label what might simply be parallels as the propagation of earlier systems. For example, Snyder’s analysis of Sattler’s soteriology concluded that Sattler’s regard for justification and sanctification being a single event internal to the believer was a continuation of the Catholic conception of the same rather than an acceptance of the reformer’s doctrine, which bifurcated the event in forensic justification, making justification an external act on the believer (177). Sattler’s agreement with the reformers on this point was rather that he accepted the Catholic conception but rejected the sacramental means of mediating that inward righteousness.

            Two problems come to the fore, the first being particular to this aspect of Snyder’s evaluation and the second being more generally applied to Snyder’s overall conclusions. The first is that Anabaptists do not seem to have merely held on to the Catholic conception of the unity of justification and sanctification but seem to have been reuniting the two after the reformers had divided them and resulting in what the Anabaptists generally critiqued as an allowance for libertinism. Sattler’s agreement with then would then be derived from Anabaptism, which itself could be characterized not by a continuation of Catholic thought but a reaction against the Protestant overreaction to Catholic thought. The second problem is that Snyder did not give much consideration to the formation of Sattler’s thought directly from his reading of Scripture, even if Sattler’s Biblicism was not of the same humanistic vein that produced the initial group of Zürich Anabaptists. In raising the question of the origin of Sattler’s eschatology, Snyder only allowed for a unique contribution from Sattler only after not being able to find a historical antecedent. It would seem that Sattler’s Biblicism deserved greater weight.

            Further, in identifying Sattler’s ecclesiology of a separated community as having stemmed from the Benedictine sense of separation (191-194), Snyder did not account for a significant difference between monastic separation and that of Anabaptism. In monasticism, the separation was within the church while Anabaptist separation was from the world. This essential difference does not indicate as strongly that Sattler was keeping Benedictine separation but could indicate that Sattler derived his understanding unmediated from Scripture. Essentially, the question is of which factors carry more weight, whether the similarity of separation or the difference of the separation as being within the church or being the church separated from the world. Snyder appears to occasionally assign weight to these factors arbitrarily in order confirm his broader thesis of asserting Benedictine priority in the formation of Sattler’s thought. This he does in his analysis of Sattler’s understanding of the struggle between the flesh and the spirit. He claimed that the structures of Sattler’s and Benedict’s portrayal of the struggle were the same while the aims and conceptions of each were different. It appears to be an arbitrary assignment of greater weight on the structures of those portrayals that lends evidence toward Snyder’s overall conclusion.

            That discussion of separation was instrumental in the last of Snyder’s conclusions, which was to challenge the arguments that emphasized the socioeconomic concerns of Anabaptism. Those arguments were that Anabaptist separation resulted from the failed establishment of Anabaptist civil and societal reform. Only after those attempts failed did the movement pragmatically turn toward a separatist doctrine. Snyder labeled this a necessary condition but rejected that it was sufficient (201-202). Sattler’s Benedictine-inspired sectarianism, in Snyder’s view, was injected into the Anabaptist movement right at the time when the attempt at social reform failed. It was then Sattler’s sectarianism tat completed the Anabaptist turn toward sectarianism in the wake of the failure of social reform. Snyder thus offers a corrective to an interpretation that overemphasizes the social dimensions of the Radical Reformation. This further highlights the need to explore the normativity of Schleitheim for later generations of Anabaptists

            Regarding the debate that has followed the book, Heinold Fast challenged a key document that would seem to undermine Snyder’s paradigm in this way.[2] Fast suggested that the Michal referred to in a letter dated May 21, 1526 was not Sattler but Michael Wüst, Bullinger’s cousin. That letter referred to this Michael as not having yet been rebaptized. Subtly pointing to Snyder’s overconfident tone, Fast concludes that this then takes away a key piece of evidence that suggests a later date for Sattler’s baptism, which then could have been at the earlier points of Sattler’s contact with Anabaptists in 1525 rather than Snyder’s date of late Summer of 1526. Fast was gracious to Snyder, allowing that the source material was not widely available at the time of Snyder’s writing but Fast still suggested that this left many new questions to be asked of Snyder’s paradigm.

            Should Fast’s objection be sustained, this would not cause as grave of doubts as Fast suggested but would only leave yet more empty spaces. The stool might not fall over but it might wobble like your high school math desk. Snyder did respond,[3] acknowledging the strength of Fast’s remarks but holding to his position. He offered that the Michaels of the letter could be the reverse of what Fast had argued, further proposing that Wüst could have been the “brother Michael in the white coat” who had been arrested in Zürich in March 1525. The answer to this debate may be lost to history and philology might never be conclusive, yet Snyder’s paradigm seems to hold in light of the available historical data and the most that could be at stake is a switching of a date while the order would likely remain.

            Snyder’s work is valuable for understanding this significant figure and, because of its review of the previous literature, might serve well as a first in-depth look into Sattler’s life alongside the primary material of Yoder’s The Legacy of Michael Sattler. Again, Snyder generally seems surer of his conclusions than the evidence might warrant but a cautious reader expressing a critical reservation toward this end would greatly benefit from the discussion. Snyder has not given into the purely socioeconomic interpretation of Anabaptism but this work can be instructive for future students of the movement in that it does not display the over-idealism that is often presented in Anabaptist studies.

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[1]“The Life and Thought of Michael Sattler, Anabaptist.” Ph.D. diss., McMaster University, 1981.

[2]“Michael Sattler’s Baptism: Some Comments.” MQR 30, no. 3 (July, 1986): 364-373.

[3]“Michael Sattler’s Baptism: Some Comments in Reply to Heinhold Fast.” MQR 62, no. 4 (Oct. 1988): 496-506.