Later Writings of the Swiss Anabaptists (Classics of the Radical Reformation)

by C. Arnold Snyder

Publisher:

Plough Publishing House

, 2019

Overview

The story of Anabaptist origins in Switzerland is well known. By contrast, the life and thought of the Anabaptists who continued to live in Switzerland over the last two-thirds of the sixteenth century has remained in relative obscurity. One reason for this is that Swiss Anabaptists after 1530 communicated their ideas by circulating handwritten writings rather than by printing books.

This present volume contains a selection of those writings that were being copied and circulated among the later Anabaptists in Switzerland. The text that dominates the present collection, both in terms of length and complexity, is the massive 466-page Codex 628, copied in 1590 and containing a wide sampling of material considered significant by the Swiss Anabaptists at the end of the century. Readers of this volume thus have the opportunity to peruse, in translation, significant archival holdings that document the development of Swiss Anabaptist thought over the course of the sixteenth century.

These writings reveal a maturing religious and social movement whose members continued to reflect biblically on their call to discipleship while living in a world that designated all adult baptizers heretics and disobedient, dangerous citizens.

This is the thirteenth volume in the Classics of the Radical Reformation, a series of Anabaptist and Free Church documents translated and annotated under the direction of the Institute of Mennonite Studies.

Key Features

• Contains a selection of writings circulating in Swiss Anabaptist communities in the “hidden years,” from 1529 to 1592
• Presents some significant archival holdings that document the development of Swiss Anabaptism over the length of the sixteenth century
• Adds more depth and further nuance to the story of the Swiss baptizers of the late sixteenth century

Contents

• Introduction - C. Arnold Snyder
• Martin Weninger, Regarding Church Attendance and Separation (before 1535)
• Two Writings by Wilhelm Reublin
• Hans Fischer Responds to Questioning (1548)
• Interrogation of Jakob Maler (1553)
• Agreement Made by the Brothers and Elders at Strasbourg, Assembled because of the Question of the Origin of the Flesh of Christ (1555)
• Letter of Zylis and Lemke to Menno Simons, Concerning Avoidance (1557)
• The Strasbourg Discipline (1568)
• [Thomas Meyer], Concerning the Christian Ban (before 1575)
• Prefaces to Three “Swiss Brethren” Hymnals
• Letter to the Magistrates in Bern (1585)
• Introduction to Codex 628, Berner Burgerbibliothek
• A Short, Simple Confession
• Concerning Separation
• Anabaptist Supplication to the Zurich Magistrates (1589), Andreas Gut Concerning the Anabaptist Supplication, [Johann Rudolf Stumpf]
• Answer from the Swiss Brethren to the Polish [Brethren] (1592)

Product Details

• Title: Later Writings of the Swiss Anabaptists 1529–1592
• Author: C. Arnold Snyder
• Series: Classics of the Radical Reformation
• Publisher: Plough Publishing House
• Print Publication Date: 2019
• Pages: 609
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Resource ID: LLS:LTRWRTSWISSANBPT
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2021-03-31T15:08:31Z

Sample Pages from Later Writings of the Swiss Anabaptists (Classics of the Radical Reformation)