Radical Reformation Studies

Essays Presented to James M. Stayer

Werner O. Packull, Geoffrey L. Dipple

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780754600329
• eBook ISBN: 9781351906883
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This review brings together new research in three areas of Anabaptist studies and the Radical Reformation. Part One focuses on sixteenth-century Anabaptism, re-examining the 'polygenesis model' of Anabaptism articulated by Stayer, Packull and Depperman. Part Two deals with the connections between Anabaptists and other Reformation dissenters, their marginalisation as social groups and their relations with the intellectual movements of the age. The final section addresses historiographic and comparative issues of writing the history of marginalised groups, investigating some preconceptions which influence historians' approaches to Anabaptism and their implications for understanding other religious groups.

PART ONE
Polygenesis and beyond? New research into Anabaptism

CHAPTER ONE

The decline of Hutterite community of goods

Taira Kuratsuka

translated by James M. Stayer*

As the Hutterites first enjoyed peace and prosperity under the policy of tolerance of the Moravian Hussite nobility, and as their 20 000 members lived in well-functioning order, the author of a chronicle of 1569 proudly declared:

Think of the ingenious works of a clock, where one piece helps another to make it go, so that it serves its purpose. Or think of the bees, those useful little insects working together in their hive, some making wax, some honey, some fetching water, until their noble work of making sweet honey is done, not only for their own needs but enough to share with man. That is how it was among the brothers. So there has to be an order in all areas, for the matters of life can be properly maintained and furthered only where order reigns - even more so in the house of God, whose Master Builder and Establisher is the Lord himself.¹

As can be seen here, Hutterite community of goods had absorbed a very strong utopianism. Even today we are deeply moved by the heroic martyrdom suffered by many Hutterites during prolonged fearsome persecutions, as well as their unbending religious conviction by means of which they were able to realize a utopian community in Moravia. However, the glittering surface of the utopia was always unavoidably accompanied by the dark counter-utopia which underlaid it. In order that the utopia might function as a perfect system the leaders had to rob the members, who worked as components of the system, not only of their freedom but also of their individuality and turn them, in a manner of speaking, into tin soldiers - otherwise the working of the utopia would be severely disturbed by irregular and unplanned behaviour of the members. Hence Josef Beck observed, ‘The strict church discipline ... extended to the external appearance and activity of the community. ... Everything, even greeting and kissing, was brought by them into the sphere of “public order” and regulated by ordinances.’² The elder, Andreas Ehrenpreis, who struggled in the seventeenth century to resurrect the disintegrating Hutterite community, preached to the faithful: ‘[The self] must be broken if we are to belong to the community of the Supper and to serve in communal work. Furthermore, the grain had to be brought together into one flour and one loaf. Not one grain could preserve itself as it was or keep what it had.’³

Although the Hutterites to a high degree were robbed of selfconsciousness and given in its place the common we-consciousness of the utopia, these ‘tin soldiers’ were naturally human beings nonetheless. Again and again they weakened this utopia in order to fulfil the minimum of their human desires.

We must ask ourselves how the children were brought up in this community of goods, how they endured the upbringing and, finally, what kind of people they became. As soon as the communal school system began, it faced two substantial problems: the first was a terrifyingly high child mortality; the second was the cruel use of the cane on the children for discipline and the maintenance of good order in doing God’s work.

The mortality rate for children was very high everywhere in the middle ages but in the Hutterite community it was extremely high. Naturally no statistics are available on this subject but a great many who left the community testified to the sad stories of their families: ‘When she [a woman named Pirchner] came to Moravia they took her children and put them in school. In the course of six or seven weeks her four children died.’⁴ ‘Hans Braun came to Moravia with his wife and four children; three of the children died, of whom one was living apart from the parents in the community school.’⁵ The reason for this was that many children were crammed together into a big room, indeed ‘two or three, according to their size, sleep together’.⁶ In this way they were very easily infected by various communicable diseases. It can be said with certainty that the children would not have been infected with these diseases had they been cared for by their families, particularly by their mothers. In 1556 leading Lutheran theologians composed a long document, recommending to the Count of the Palatinate severe punishment for unrepentant Anabaptists: ‘Process for dealing with the Anabaptists, proposed by some scholars assembled at Worms’.⁷ In this document they levelled severe charges at the Hutterites on account of the death of numerous children.

We also know that things are badly awry with the community in Moravia. It is particularly terrible that the young children are taken away from the parents in order to educate them in the same way under common supervision. And many children are killed by hunger and other kinds of neglect. To summarize, such a devilish communion is an impossible thing contrary to nature and law.⁸

In 1558 the Hutterite chief elder, Peter Walpot, and his councillors rebutted the charges in ‘A booklet against the Process ... ’,⁹ but the charge about the death of Hutterite children was rebutted without substantive proof. Probably they wanted to avoid all further controversy over this sore point.

For ten years thereafter it became a pressing necessity for the Hutterite elders to take the required measures against the various communicable diseases. Many parents came to the schools in great anxiety to submit complaints about the health of their children. In a speech to the schoolmasters, dated 1568, Walpot said: ‘It has often been the case that parents come to us and say “My brethren, I have committed myself and my children to the Lord and to the school”, and then complain that one of the children has gotten impetigo in the school or some other ailment, be it on the eyes or the hands or the feet.’

When dealing with people whose children were sick or had died, the elders’ words of consolation and their sermons about Gelassenheit, or Christian ‘yieldedness’, were inadequate in the face of parental sorrow and anger. If a panic broke out due to the death of a great number of children, many parents would rush to the schools to remove their children despite the vehement resistance of the elders. In this way the family, the suspected ‘root of egoism’, would reassert itself and the community of goods would be extinguished. Presumably on the basis of such considerations, the leaders concerned themselves with the deplorable situation of many children and considered what might be done.

Hence presiding elder Walpot published the school ordinance of 1568 accompanied by a long speech. Its primary content was the health care of the children, particularly preventive measures against communicable diseases and provisions for the care of the sick:

And when the children are brought to the school they should be carefully examined and if any one is found to have a contagious disease such as scurvy or the French disease [syphilis?] or paralysis, he shall be instantly separated from the rest in sleeping, in eating and in drinking, in washing, and everything. Also special brushes and combs shall be used for those having scalp eruptions. Those who have scabies shall be put together and not kept with those who are clean; likewise those who have scalp diseases.¹⁰

Other regulations of particular interest were that in arranging the beds the sisters should take care that ‘the children who are clean are kept together and those who are not clean are kept together’.¹¹ Also the school mothers were instructed that ‘when they reach into a sore mouth with the fingers, they shall be careful that they do not at once with unwashed fingers reach into a healthy mouth and thereby contaminate it too, but shall always beforehand cleanse the fingers with a clean cloth and water before they examine others’.¹² This ordinance also established various regulations for child care: ‘The bed clothing shall be kept clean and shall be regularly changed, and when the little children get up in the morning, a sister, with two or three girls, must always be at hand on the stairway to see that no one falls’.¹³ ‘Also, together with the sisters [the schoolmaster] must pay attention to the children’s shoes so that they do not have such hard shoes that make the feet sore.’¹⁴ ‘You should not bathe the children every fortnight, for this is not necessary, but bathe them once in four weeks and wash them every fortnight, unless there is a special reason or on account of scalp disorders’.¹⁵ Obviously with such measures the Hutterites were not able to prevent various communicable diseases. Nevertheless, in relation to the primitive state of sixteenth-century medicine, their efforts were relatively progressive. Initially, however, their utopian communal way of life was the cause of the tragic deaths of many small children.

In the sixteenth century children were often caned by teachers in Latin schools and by their own fathers, but mother’s love kept children from falling into despair. In the Hutterite communities, however, the mother was absent from the time the child was two; the children were abandoned to loneliness. There were only school mothers, sisters, child-care maids, female custodians and so on, who served as supervisors of approximately one hundred children. True, it was preached to them that they should love the children as if they were their own. But the leadership, it seems, always directed the overwhelming majority of the members of the community to material production, hence there were insufficient personnel to care for the large number of children throughout the whole day and night. Therefore in good times and bad they had to discharge their responsibilities very mechanically, and because of the heavy burden of work they often erupted into anger. Walpot said to the schoolmasters:

The schoolmaster is to be present in the school room not only for the children’s sake, but also in order to give aid and advice to the sisters, for they need your oversight just as much as the children - since women are women and the weaker vessel - lest they in their annoyance and complaints go about among the children with canes as one does among cattle, when the flesh gets the upper hand and quickly becomes angry, as we have ourselves experienced.¹⁶

Often the children were treated in a similar way to that experienced by Japanese soldiers in the last phases of the Second World War:

It has also occasionally been observed and experienced in the schools that a whole row or group of children among whom some talking has been heard have been taken out and all of them, the guilty and the innocent, punished one by one with the cane. This shall not be done any longer.¹⁷

The following remark shows that the children rebelled against abuses of caning: ‘The children shall be made and accustomed not to fight against the cane but present themselves willingly; then one can always deal with them more gently than if they resist; resistance can not and shall not be tolerated’.¹⁸

How should the personnel cope with so many children, presumably educated in a large group rather than distributed into classes? They were virtually forced to use canes and blows. When we read supplementary paragraphs to the school ordinances added by Hans Kräl, the next presiding e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Page
• Notes on contributor
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One Polygenesis and beyond? New research into Anabaptism
• Part Two Anabaptists, witches and Reformation radicalism
• Part Three The theory and practice of writing histories of radical or non-conformist religious groups
• James M. Stayer: Publications
• Index