An Introduction to Mennonite History

Cornelius J. Dyck

• Editorial: Herald Press
• Año: 1993
• ISBN:
  9780836197334
• Categoría: Théologie et religion
• Categoría: Histoire du Christianisme

A unique resource for a generation, the preeminent textbook in its field. Cornelius J. Dyck interacts with the many changes in the Anabaptist/Mennonite experience and historical understandings in this revised and updated edition. This is a history of Mennonites from the 16th century to the present. Though simply written, it reflects fine scholarship and deep Christian concern.

1

The Church Before the Reformation

THE REFORMATION was a sixteenth-century movement in Europe to reform the church. Sometimes October 31, 1517, is given as the date of its beginning. On that day Martin Luther posted ninety-five statements about the church for discussion at Wittenberg University in Germany. The problems which brought about the Reformation were spiritual, social, economic, and political in origin and combined to bring about important changes in the life and thought of the Western world.

At the center of this movement was a desire to reform the church. All through the Middle Ages the voices of councils, clergy, kings, and lay people had been calling for an end to the corruption of the institutional church. By the year 1500, many proposals for reform had been heard, but there was little agreement about how these might be carried out.

All reformers, however, seemed to agree that reformation meant a return of the church to its first-century apostolic purity. In this sense the Reformation was a backward-looking movement. Somewhere along the way the church had fallen and needed to return to a virtue it had once possessed. A brief look at the church before the Reformation will help us to understand more fully the events of the early sixteenth century and their influence upon us.

Persecution: Soon after Pentecost the church which Jesus Christ had founded suffered persecution. The baptism with water and by the Spirit was often followed by the baptism of blood—martyrdom. Hated by the Jews and suspected by the Romans as “enemies of the human race” (Tacitus), suffering became part of the new life in Christ for his disciples (Heb. 11:37-38). But “the blood of martyrs is seed” (Tertullian). By mid-second century the Epistle to Diognetus reminded the persecutors that they were fighting a losing battle: “Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the more do others increase? These things do not seem to come from a human power; they are a mighty act of God; they are proofs of his presence.”

The church had indeed spread incredibly, from Rome to Asia Minor and India, from Europe to North Africa. It included men and women of many different cultural backgrounds. Some of its leading teachers and writers, like Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, and others, were North Africans. Some of its major leaders, as in Montanism, which tried to restore a declining emphasis upon the Holy Spirit, were women. But the church was also adapting to its environment and being changed by it. There were still occasional persecutions in the third and early fourth centuries, but political leaders found many Christians increasingly cooperative and congenial. By A.D. 173 army life had become so attractive and Christianity so much a part of society that young Christian men began enlisting in the Roman legions. Increasingly, becoming a Christian came to be the acceptable thing to do.

Constantine: This trend toward the total acceptance of Christians into society received dramatic reinforcement when Constantine became emperor of Rome early in the fourth century. Christians were now the royal favorites while non-Christians were soon persecuted. Sunday was decreed a public day of rest and worship, combining a pagan celebration with the Christian desire to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus as Christ and to distinguish themselves from the Sabbath-keeping Jews. As emperor, Constantine wrote letters of instruction to the clergy, though he himself was not a baptized Christian, and enforced the discipline of the church with the power of the state. He called the clergy together at state expense to consider basic issues of the faith and sometimes chaired their meetings personally.

Why he did all this is not clear. He needed an appealing state religion to unify the empire, and he may himself have been attracted to the Christian faith. Whatever the reasons, from that time on church and state went hand in hand. Though they were to quarrel often in the centuries to come, no one seriously questioned this Constantinian synthesis for over 1,000 years. A Christian society into which all persons were born as citizens, and baptized in infancy as Christians, seemed to be the fulfillment of God’s plan for humankind.

The church now faced the enormous task of making society Christian and absorbing into its life the masses of people who had become members without knowing it. This already hopeless undertaking was doomed to certain failure soon after it began by the infiltration into the Roman Empire, and therefore into the church, of thousands upon thousands of Goths, Vandals, and other tribes from the North. By A.D. 500 all of Italy was under the rule of their king Theodoric (d. 526). Much of Northern Europe was ruled by Clovis (d. 511), who became a Christian because, like Constantine, he believed that God had given him victory in battle. Externally the church prospered. Some of the old glory of the disintegrating Roman Empire came to be associated with the papacy. As spiritual successors of the apostle Peter, and political successors in Rome of the emperors who had moved to Constantinople, the bishops (popes) of Rome soon became the most powerful men in Europe.

A double standard: There were those, of course, who protested against this secularization of the church. Hermits arose to live in lonely and desert places, torturing their bodies to liberate the spirit for communion with God. Monks banded together to build monasteries in which they could escape the sin and temptation of a wicked world by giving themselves to prayer and fasting. Similarly, convents were built for nuns. But instead of leading to a general repentance, the lives of these few stimulated the developing double moral standard whereby the excess merit which these saints were assumed to possess was transferred to those who seemed unable to or did not want to live a godly life. Soon lay people were not expected to live on the same moral and spiritual level as saints or clergy.

Attempts at reform: There were many persons who tried to renew the life of the church in these centuries and with some success. Protestant preoccupation with the Reformation of the sixteenth century has tended to overlook these movements. Among the reformers was Benedict of Nursia (d. ca. 547) whose spiritual concern led to the founding of the Benedictine Order, a renewal movement which has continued to this day. His Rule gave guidance to the worship and work of monasteries and convents. Early in the seventh century Gregory the Great prepared new forms of worship and sent missionaries to England, which led to a return missionary program from England to the continent under Boniface in the eighth century. One of the greatest forces of reform was Charlemagne (d. 814). With the help of the Benedictine adviser, Alcuin of York (d. 804), clergy training was undertaken, preaching encouraged, church discipline initiated, mutual aid encouraged, monasteries reformed, and a vast network of schools established in much of what is now known as Western Europe.

Other reform movements came upon the scene. In the tenth century the monastic reforms of Cluny touched most of the monasteries of Europe, and in the eleventh priests were forbidden to marry in order, among other reasons, to prevent them from being a hereditary caste with inherited power and wealth. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Franciscans, Dominicans, and other priestly orders arose to teach, preach, and serve among the people. And in the thirteenth century Innocent III convened a council to reform the church, while Thomas Aquinas hammered out a theological system which attempted to pull together all the traditions of the church into a meaningful faith.

Yet none of these reforms turned the church decisively in a new direction. By the ninth century, for example, almost one half of the land in Europe was under the control of the church. It became ever more difficult for the church to limit itself to spiritual affairs while leaving secular things to the authorities of the state. By the twelfth century the authority of the church was almost universal. Princes and statesmen, bankers and scholars were subject to its will. As the moon shines only by the reflected light of the sun, so the glory and power of the state is only a reflection of the greater glory and power of the church, it was said.

The Crusades: But the very “success” of the church became its undoing. In 1096 Pope Urban II launched the Crusades to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims. The sword became the missionary instrument of the church. All who went to fight were assured full remission of the penalties for their sins, and tens of thousands went in repeated waves until the thirteenth century. There was even a Children’s Crusade in 1212. The wealthy, and those who could not go, were able to buy indulgences granting the same remission of sins as those who went received, a development which was to become the direct cause of Luther’s protest in 1517.

For more than twelve centuries the church was the dominant power in Western Europe. The cathedral complex of Bamberg recalls the day when the church owned 50 percent of the land and employed 15 percent of the population.

The Crusades brutalized the life of the church. In 1208 Pope Innocent III declared a Crusade in Europe itself against the Cathari of France. When a Crusader asked how he might know the heretical Cathari from true believers, he was told to kill them all, for the Lord would know his own and would sort them out at the pearly gates.

The Sacramental System: At the heart of church life was the sacramental system which had grown up around the teaching of Jesus and the early church. There were now seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, penance, the mass (Lord’s Supper), marriage, ordination, and extreme unction. In each of these the ritual itself became more important than faith and obedience. It was believed that water baptism saved the infant from hell and that in the mass the bread and wine became the actual flesh and blood of Christ (tran-substantiation). Extreme unction became the last rite to prepare for death, instead of a prayer for healing, as taught in James 5:14-15. The spiritual had become almost entirely objective and mechanical. But the sacraments were necessary for the functioning of society, a tradition, ritual or structure without which things would have fallen apart, the glue which held Christendom together. Sacraments meant unity, community, life and hope.

Late medieval piety: There were, obviously, also people who had a deep personal faith. There were faithful, dedicated priests. There were skeptics who didn’t care about faith, but most people relied on this sacramental system for their salvation. Plagues, wars, and fear of death made people long for a guaranteed escape from hell. Helping the sacramental routine were woodcuts on religious themes which people unable to read could hang on the wall as aids in prayer. There were also Bibles for those who could read and their number increased rapidly with Gutenberg’s invention of movable type. More popular, however, were the relics of saints and pilgrimages to shrines. In 1509, Frederick the Wise, Prince of Saxony and Luther’s protector, had 5,005 relic items on display. The viewing of each was said to give one hundred days’ remission from purgatory. A grand total reduction of 500,000 years of purgatory could be obtained at Wittenberg.

Great trust was placed in the help of saints. They aided the sinners’ access to God. None were called on more often than Mary, for whom veneration increased enormously in the twelfth and following centuries. Folk piety had to have a sinless Mary to intercede for them with the sinless Christ. Mary was considered the second Eve—as the disobedience of the first Eve had made the coming of Christ necessary, so the obedience of the second Eve (Mary) had made it possible (cf: 1 Cor. 15:22). The devil and his seduction became a dominant theme in literature, art, and conversation. He was a real competitor with God for the soul of the sinner. Some people, of course, did not care but many were afraid. Many believed that the end of the world was near, and God seemed far away; they longed for a personal rather than an institutional church relationship to God.

Preparing the Way

The Reformation did not come unannounced. The influence of the Crusades and of the Renaissance, the rise of nationalism and its clash with the international papal church, the corruption of the clergy and the church, the growing restlessness of the common people all became signs that a major storm was about to break.

Not least among these signs were men and movements which helped to prepare the way for the spiritual renewal which the Reformation was to bring. Consciously or unconsciously the reformers of the sixteenth century stood on the shoulders of these men and movements. We think, for example, of Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), who recaptured in his own life what it means to be a disciple of Christ. We think also of Girolamo Savonarola, who was hanged in Florence in 1498, because of his powerful preaching and growing popularity. And there were many others!

Among these others were three men and two groups of men whose thought and work were particularly important in preparing the way for the Reformation. The men were Peter Waldo, John Wyclif, and John Hus; the groups of men were the mystics and the humanists. Waldo, Wyclif, and Hus were men of conviction. They were also men of action. The mystics and the humanists were not activist reformers, but their spiritual and intellectual leadership prepared the way for the men of action and created the kind of climate in the minds of the people which made reform possible.

Peter Waldo (d. ca. 1218): In 1176, the song of a minstrel stirred a deep longing in the heart of Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyon, France. Upon asking a theologian for the best way to God, he was quoted Matthew 19:21: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” A new life began for Waldo with this verse. He sold his property, resolving to be as poor as Jesus and the apostles had been. He left enough money to support his wife and family. Then he began to study the New Testament, memorizing favorite passages, and reciting them to whoever would listen, also sharing his own interpretation of the passage.

He was soon joined by others. The group eventually became known as Waldensians, calling themselves the Poor in Spirit, and asked the Third Lateran Council in 1179 for permission to preach as lay persons. This was denied, but they felt compelled by God to continue nevertheless. Severe persecution followed for almost 700 years; relative freedom was granted them in Italy, where the largest groups came to live, only in 1848.

At the heart of the Waldensian reform movement was a love for the Scriptures and a desire to put into practice in their own lives what they read in them. They studied the Bible together in small group meetings. In their writings the Word of God is called

One objectionable feature of the medieval church was the selling of indulgences —the pardon of one’s sins in return for specific sums of money. The practice was questioned by thinking Christians, but the church took no action on their concerns, since the system provided a steady source of revenue. The wild claims made by Johannes Tetzel, shown here, led to Luther’s break with Rome.

…salvation for the soul of the poor, a tonic for the weak, food for the hungry, teaching for the true, comfort unto the chastened, the cessation of slander and the acquisition of virtue.

Even as they who are assailed by the enemy flee to a strong tower so do the assailed saints betake themselves to the Holy Scripture. There they find weapons against heresies, armor against the assaults of the devil, the assaults of the flesh, the glory of the world.¹

Because they placed special emphasis on the New Testament and obedience to the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, they became known as the Sermon on the Mount people. And, because they were convinced that the Scriptures held the answer to people’s problems, they traveled all over Europe two by two, preaching, witnessing, and suffering for the sake of Christ. The neglect of the Scriptures in Roman Catholicism was to them a certain sign that the church had fallen from the faith.

The Waldensians were not Protestants before the Reformation, but Christians who took the Word of God seriously. They rejected the mass, purgatory, and participation in warfare as unbiblical, but continued to practice infant baptism. They believed that all Christians, whether men or women, were called to witness to their faith by living it and preaching it. So effective were they in this lay witnessing that long before the Reformation a Roman Catholic leader wrote, “One third of Christendom if not more has attended illicit Waldensian conventicles [meetings) and is at heart Waldensian.” ² Numerous attempts to link the Anabaptists historically with the Waldensians have failed, but through them the spiritual soil was being prepared for the events of the sixteenth century.

John Wyclif (d. 1384): A man who prepared the way for Martin Luther and other reformers much more than the Waldensians was John Wyclif, the “Morning Star of the Reformation.” Wyclif, a professor at Oxford University, became a reformer only in the last decade of his life. He had long believed that the church should be poor as were the apostles and that Christ had given it authority over spiritual matters only. When he met representatives of the pope at Bruges in 1374 and fou...