Framing Religious Leadership in Dutch Nationalist Confessional Historiography: Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine in the 1540s–1550s

1 Introduction

“Menno Symonson and Dirck Philipson, staying together and daily sowing the seeds of error, between the years 1542 and 1547 also sent forth certain teachers, Adam Pastor, Henrich van Vreen, Antonius van Coelen, Gielis van Aken, and Frans Reynckeuper.”^[1]

This single sentence became a frequently repeated one-liner by friends and foes of Dutch Anabaptism/Mennonitism.^[2] It was first recorded in the earliest source on the history of Northern Netherlandish/German Anabaptism, the Svccessio Anabaptistica (1603), by Simon Walraven, a contemporary witness and strict post-Tridentine Catholic writer.^[3] A reprint was published in 1612, again in Cologne. The intent of this well-documented and consistent polemic was to deny the Anabaptists’ claim of unity of apostolic succession while refuting Jacob Pietersz. van der Meulen’s Svccessio apostolica (1600), which had been written to prove that Anabaptism was in direct lineal descent from the Apostolic Church.^[4] Besides, Walraven also demonstrated the endless quarrels and schisms among the Anabaptists, as becomes evident from the subtitle Which Is Babel of the Anabaptists. However, Dutch Anabaptist succession had its origin only from 1530 with Melchior Hoffman (1495–1543). Afterwards, Anabaptism came into power in Münster and took up arms to defend the city (1534–1535). After the reconquest, a leadership vacuum appeared in several scattered Anabaptist groups, from which around 1539 Menno emerged as the new leader. As a result, this single sentence created a centuries-long top-down historiographical tradition of an autocratic bishop-based approach in Dutch Anabaptism from 1540 to the late 1550s. Scholars from various perspectives report that Menno Simons (1496–1561) and Dirk Philips (1504–1568) sent bishops to Flanders and the Lower Rhine to spread Mennonitism.^[5] After all, the Anabaptist bishop was the only one who had the right to preach and baptize.^[6] This early image of the sending of bishops has been appropriated in Anabaptist memory, namely that Menno Simons and in his wake, Dirk Philips became the religious leaders and molders of Dutch/Northern German Anabaptism and Menno’s life story became a legend with almost universal appeal.^[7]

Nevertheless, some contemporaries emphasized that different groups of Anabaptists had formed around other bishops instead of all being followers of Menno Simons. Gerhard Nicolai, the Reformed minister of Norden and translator of Bullinger’s writing against Anabaptists mentions in the Inlasschingen (1569) the “‘Menno’s volck’, from which all the others sprouted” and an “Adam Pastor’s Community and people or an “Adam Pastor’s sect.” Gellius Faber (ca. 1490–1564), the Reformed minister in Emden, who in 1544 took part in the disputation between Menno Simons and the superintendent of East-Friesland, Johannes à Lasco (1499–1560), notes in 1551 that although all are Anabaptists, “one is Mennonite, the other is Adam Pastorite, the third is Obbite, the fourth is Dirckite […].”^[8] A similar interpretation emerges in an undated piece of writing attributed to the humanist polemicist Dirck Coornhert (1522–1590): “For the one now says: I am with the Roman Church, the other I am with Luther, yet another I am with Zwinglius, Oecolampadius, I am with Calvin, I am with Menno Symonsz., I am with Adam Pastor, I am with Davidt Iorissz, and so on.”^[9] The Governor, the Chancellor, and the Councilor of the Duchy of Gelre ordered in the name of Charles V (1500–1558) to prosecute Gillis van Aken (ca. 1500–1557) “[…] one of the main Anabaptists and leaders of these sects” in 1551.^[10] Thus, as will become apparent, at the time the “Adam Pastor’s volck” and the “Gelys van Aicken’s volck” were regarded as distinct local denominational-type groupings around one bishop. Precisely this group formation and not just rebaptism as heresy escaped the grip of the local government, for it was denounced as insurrection and therefore determined the investigation and prosecution; thus, the local administration was more focused on preventing civic disorder than on implementing Charles V’s general strict policy of prosecuting heresy and proselytism.^[11]

Anabaptist historiography tends to describe this banned, persecuted, and totally illegal reform movement in the same way as that of the magisterial reformers Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. However, the Anabaptist movement had no established doctrines and received no government support. What was characteristic was a multitude of individuals with their own divergent views and their own constituencies and mission. Because of this hybrid, polygenetic origin of Anabaptism, research into the diversity at the core of this movement is the way to map, analyze, and reflectively test the history of Anabaptism.^[12]

For this reason, this article examines the convention of the framing in Anabaptist historiography of the religious leadership of Menno Simons and, in his wake, Dirk Philips, as the leading post-Münster Anabaptist bishops, who increasingly stabilized the Anabaptist movement and built up an extensive Anabaptist/Mennonite network in the Habsburg Netherlands/Northern Germany, stretching along the Hanseatic coast to Danzig and the Rhine to Bonn and into Flanders.^[13] The article argues that early Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine was not primarily led by Menno Simons, as often claimed, but had multiple centers around regional bishops that operated across political boundaries. Over time Menno ascended in importance in historical memory even as the historiography of Anabaptism divided into German and Dutch national strands that emphasized endemic Dutch and Rhenish Anabaptist traditions operating in isolation.

Based on research of Anabaptism in the Lower Rhine region, this article first reviews the de-centralized role of local, cross-border Anabaptist bishops during the years 1540–1550. It criticizes the consensus narrative that suggests an alleged central role of Menno and Dirk and instead demonstrates that Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine and the Habsburg Netherlands was polyphonic. It was represented by itinerant bishops, each with his own, albeit overlapping, network.^[14] The article then proceeds to contextualize the narrative of religious leadership and questions its historical construction in Anabaptist confessional historiography since the seventeenth century. It particularly argues against the preservation of the seventeenth-century notion that “Menno and Dirck make other bishops,” which has been misconstrued in historical memory since the marginal note in the Svccessio Anabaptistica.^[15]

Thus, through this study, a deeper understanding of the intricate process involved in constructing a historical representation of Anabaptism during the mid-sixteenth century is achieved. The research sheds light on the subsequent interplay between “invented tradition,” appropriation, transmission, and perception within this historical context in parallel to studies of the historiography of the Reformation era from the seventeenth century until today.^[16] In particular, the study addresses the historical oblivion present in both Anabaptist historiography and the national Dutch Protestant historical memory since the seventeenth century, specifically concerning the evidence of transregional Anabaptist leadership on the Lower Rhine found in the archives.

2 Anabaptist Religious Leadership on the Lower Rhine in the 1540s and 1550s

The definition of the Lower Rhine (see note 14) covers the area where the Lower Rhine Anabaptist bishops were active in the late 1540s and early 1550s. Since the 1530s, the triangle of the Meuse Valley, in the present Dutch province of Limburg from Roermond to Sittard, together with the German district of Heinsberg, became the “seedbed” and center of the (pre-)Anabaptist movement (Map 1).^[17] This perspective emphasizes the significance of marginal regions in the process of crossing borders within peripheries and borderlands. It challenges the conventional understanding of vertical relations between centers, such as Anabaptism in Friesland, Groningen, and Holland, and peripheries, specifically the Lower Rhine. By doing so, it brings to light unexpected horizontal connections that connected regions traditionally perceived as historically insignificant.^[18]

Map 1:

The Habsburg Netherlands and the Lower Rhine (Christian Sgrooten, Atlas Bruxellensis (s.l., s.n., 1573), a cutout of the map Germaniaee inferioris et regni Angliaee […].).

Few studies on religious life on the Lower Rhine in the first half of the sixteenth century in this cross-border area as a whole have been published, let alone on the development of Anabaptism in the region.^[19] The area was not a unified ecclesiastical entity, and its territorial political boundaries did not coincide with its ecclesiastical boundaries. Moreover, the region’s four prince-bishops each exercised both ecclesiastical and secular authority.^[20] Although politically fragmented, daily life in the region was nevertheless unified and relatively unaffected by territorial boundaries.^[21] This only changed with the drawing of the new boundaries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the 1830s. Retrospectively, these nineteenth-century borders were the cause of the Lower Rhine’s disappearance as a coherent subject in Anabaptist historiography.

The origin of Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine has been subject of debate. Karl Rembert dates it to the years 1532–1533, which is contrary to the evidence regarding the so-called “Stillstand,” when Hoffman declared in 1531 a suspension of baptism to avoid persecution; the practice was restored only by Jan Matthijs, the prophet of Münster, in 1533, hence adult baptism would only have spread on the Lower Rhine after the events in Münster.^[22] Nevertheless, Gerhard Westerburg (d. 1558) of Cologne, Melchior Hoffman, Johannes Campanus (ca. 1500–1575), and the Wassenberg preachers can be regarded as the main instigators and pivotal figures of the pre- or semi-Anabaptist efforts on the Lower Rhine, even before the term was coined, and Münster was thus not the only source of its origin.^[23] The 1532 Church Order of Jülich-Cleves-Berg stressed the need to baptize children, and the Church visitation in the Duchy of Jülich in 1533 reported that there were unchurched people and that the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and baptism were questioned, especially in the area of unrest – the offices of Born, Heinsberg, Millen, and Wassenberg.^[24] In Susteren, these visitors came across three tracts that provide insight into the acquaintance with the teachings of Melchior Hoffman and Campanus.^[25] As a result of the Church visitation of 1533 in Jülich, Maastricht became a refuge where Anabaptists gathered around their successive bishops Hendrick Rol (d. 1534), Jan Smeitgen, also known as Jan or Johannes van Tricht (d. 1537), and Lenart van Tongeren.^[26] Mathilde Monge argues that there was no internal cohesion in the “Christian brothers” group in Cologne. The local pastor alone seemed aware of an attachment to a larger group, which also seems to have been the case for Maastricht.^[27]

In his 1914 biography of Menno Simons church historian and doopsgezind minister Karel Vos (1874–1926) was the first to describe the Anabaptist bishops on the Lower Rhine and brought them out of obscurity, as they left no apparent following or an organized community.^[28] Only Adam Pastor left a few writings, in addition to the numerically more extensive works of Menno Simons and Dirk Philips.^[29] However, Vos’s work was poorly received by some contemporaries, who did not appreciate Vos’s series of small chapters “[…] including some on minor figures [the Lower Rhine bishops] between whom the connection sometimes seems loose.”^[30] Kühler and Zijlstra paid attention to the rivalry between Adam Pastor and Menno Simons and Dirk Philips, but not to the Anabaptist developments on the Lower Rhine in the 1540–1550s.

Recent case studies on the Lower Rhine Anabaptist bishops Adam Pastor, Gillis van Aken, and Theunis van Hastenrath, based on source evidence on post-Münster Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine during the 1540s and 1550s, have demonstrated the existence of local Anabaptist networks, gathered around these itinerant local bishops in the duchies of Cleves, Gelre and Jülich.^[31] In particular, the interrogations of several arrested Anabaptists in the Vissersweert, a floodplain in the Meuse Valley, reveal a remarkable coherence of a translocal Anabaptist network. Metken, wife of Jacob Vrencken, was interrogated in 1547.^[32] She affirmed that in 1545 she was taught by Menno Simons but also 12 years earlier [ca. 1535] by Smeitgen, an Anabaptist bishop from Maastricht, who had baptized her; “Anthonis [Antonius van Keulen] […] sometimes came to her house to teach her, that’s over three years ago now [1544], and [she] has not seen him in two years.”^[33] Lijske, Aerken Snyer’s wife, was interrogated in 1550, confessing to being baptized in 1545 by Theunis van Hastenrath in the presence of the local deacon, Lemke Cremers, and Metken. She heard the preaching of Gillis van Aken and Adam Pastor – two or three times in the case of Gillis van Aken, and she heard Menno once for an hour.^[34] Jater, Willem Libres’s daughter, the housewife of Goirt Raeymaeckers and also originally from the west bank of the Meuse, was forty years old when interrogated in 1550. She confessed that after having been refused several times, she was finally baptized in Maastricht around 1540 by Lenart van Tongeren, who apparently took over Smeitgen’s position after 1535 when he left for Antwerp.^[35]

Such proselytizing led also to an Anabaptist community in the Vissersweert, which through continuous Anabaptist activities in the area, including Maastricht and the western bank of the Meuse, became a stable node in the local interweaving of Anabaptist networks.^[36] It is remarkable, however, that there are no traces of contact with dissenters in Aachen and Cologne during the 1540s and 1550s. Smeitgen did visit Strasbourg before he was executed in Antwerp in 1537.^[37] Thus, all of the Lower Rhine bishops who met in Goch in 1547 are also found in the microcosm of the five detainees discussed above. The sources examined do not indicate that Dirk Philips was present in the Lower Rhine area, which contradicts Jacobus ten Doornkaat Koolman’s suggestion that Dirk Philips may have lived in the country of Cleves at the time. Ten Doornkaat Koolman’s suspicion that Rembert had confused Adam Pastor’s name with that of Dirk Philips is not convincingly substantiated. Furthermore, Ten Doornkaat Koolman’s argument, which relies on some correspondence from Philips about disputes between Calvinists, Zwinglians, and Anabaptists in the Lower Rhine, as well as a response from Matthias Weyer (1521–1561) from Wesel, a mystical-spiritualist, to a treatise on rebirth by Dirk Philips, does not offer any factual basis for claiming Philips’s presence in the country of Cleves and the Lower Rhine.^[38]

It is helpful here then to reconstruct the itineraries of the three Anabaptist bishops using transcripts of interrogations of suspects of Anabaptism. Adam Pastor was mainly active in the duchies of Gelre and Cleves in the northern part of the Lower Rhine.^[39] Gillis van Aken followed Lower Rhine Anabaptists to Ghent and Antwerp and missionized in the wider area. Subsequently, he followed Anabaptists from his Antwerp network to Holland, especially in Amsterdam. He also traveled close to the French border, likely to dispute emerging Calvinism.^[40] Theunis van Hastenrath was the local bishop in the cradle of Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine from Wassenberg on the Roer to the west in the direction of the Meuse.^[41] In addition, he made contact and formed coalitions with Anabaptist leaders in the more southern Eifel.^[42] This shapes a picture of three Anabaptist bishops who carried out missions in overlapping networks on the Lower Rhine (Map 2), where they preached, baptized, and shared the bread.

Map 2:

Territorial location of the Anabaptist bishops in the 1540s and 1550s.

Since data on Antonius van Keulen and Hendrik van Vreeden are extremely scarce, making case studies on these two bishops is impracticable. Antonius was active in the same area as later Theunis van Hastenrath, while Hendrik seems to have partly followed in the footsteps of Adam Pastor. There are some reports from a few other local Anabaptist bishops on the Lower Rhine, but the data are so sparse that no conclusions can be drawn.^[43]

Apart from these five bishops, the interrogations make no mention of other bishops present than one visit by Menno Simons for a few days to the Lower Rhine. He stayed with the local deacon Lemke Cremers in the Vissersweert, the homeland of Theunis van Hastenrath. Menno admonished for an hour and then left again by boat. Thus, in the Lower Rhine area, Anabaptist leadership in the 1540s and 1550s can be characterized by networks of intertwined itinerant trans-local bishops with their followers and supporters. The stability of daily life was maintained by local deacons such as Lemke Cremers in the Vissersweert who would succeed Theunis van Hastenrath as a bishop in 1551 and Jan van Hasselt who followed Gillis van Aken to Antwerp and Amsterdam to keep the local networks together in the absence of Gillis van Aken.^[44]

On the Lower Rhine, Anabaptists were less persecuted and more mildly punished than in the Habsburg Netherlands. This applies to all levels of government. As a result, there is less information available in the archives than in areas with a stricter investigation policy.^[45] Virtually all preserved archives of the interrogations commissioned by the Court of Gelre go back to the years 1549–1550; it raises the question of whether the tour of Charles V to formally present his son Philip in 1549 as heir to the throne in the Netherlands influenced the zeal of the court(s).^[46] On the Lower Rhine, only persistent, stubborn Anabaptists were sentenced to death because the accused had confessed, refused to be converted and showed no remorse.^[47]

The outcome of the three case studies demonstrates that the Anabaptist networks on the Lower Rhine in the 1540s and 1550s were of a Melchiorite/(pre-)Munsterite origin, held together at the local level by itinerant local Anabaptist bishops, and were more interconnected with each other than with the networks of Menno Simons and Dirk Philips in the north. In terms of organizational structures, the bishops’ conferences between 1547 and 1552 could be described as an attempt to form a coalition movement.^[48] This opposes the prevailing opinion of supralocal leadership structures. Hence, the regrouping of the Anabaptists after the fall of Münster in 1535 was more of a continuous quest for coalition-building than the historiography’s assertion that after ca. 1540 “Menno and Dirck made other bishops.” This essay suggests that the polemical dispute against the Nicodemite tendencies of David Joris conducted separately by both Menno Simons and Adam Pastor in the early 1540s could have given rise to collaboration, culminating in bishops’ conferences to achieve unity between the different Anabaptist networks.^[49] This coalition movement, however, did not last with any of the parties because of the diversity among the bishops.^[50] It is therefore important to reassess the influence of Menno and Philips on Anabaptism in the Lower Rhineland.

3 The Influence of Menno Simons and Dirk Philips on Lower Rhine Anabaptism

In the Doopsgezinde Bijdragen of 1996, which was entirely devoted to “500 years of Menno Simons,” Otto Knottnerus outlined Menno’s significance mainly as a temporary doctrinal ideology of some Anabaptist groups after his death (1561) to ca. 1600. Knottnerus argued that the influence on the early Anabaptist movement attributed to Menno Simons in later centuries in Mennonite history is grossly overestimated and does not reflect Menno’s limited influence and importance among the Anabaptists of his day.^[51] This is in contrast with the prevailing view since the seventeenth century that Anabaptism was rebuilt under the leadership of the former Frisian pastor Menno Simons.^[52] On the other hand, there is an appropriation outside the Netherlands, first in Prussia, then in Canada and the United States, where the image of Menno and Mennonitism remained a precious heritage. As a result Menno’s writings also remained available in print.^[53] Knottnerus’s audacious vision of “Menno as a temporary event” has been incomprehensively ignored, but has lost, as demonstrated before, none of its relevance in questioning Anabaptist historiography. This makes the question of the specific interpretation of Menno’s role as a religious leader on the Lower Rhine in the historical representation even more fascinating.^[54]

Almost as legendary as the phrase “Menno and Dirck make other bishops” is the oft-cited passage from a letter of the superintendent of East-Friesland, À Lasco, to the Reformed theologian Albert Hardenberg (1510–1574) that Menno “[…] today mainly resides in the Diocese of Cologne, and misleads man.”^[55] Menno’s biographers follow this point of view, which can be traced back to this letter.^[56] It has also been suggested that À Lasco deliberately printed his rebuttal to Menno’s opinions in Bonn to facilitate its dissemination in the Rhineland.^[57] However, it may also be that Hardenberg urged À Lasco to finally publish when he stayed with him in Bonn for a few months.

In the earliest sources of Anabaptist historiography, such as the Svccessio Anabaptistica, no attention is paid to the stay of Menno along the Rhine in the 1540s. In 1753 Deknatel writes: “Thus he [Menno] was finally compelled to leave these countries, and to move first to Wismar in Mecklenburg, then to Holstein, to Fresenburg, near Oldeslo.”^[58] Menno’s first biographer Cramer admits that he is not aware of the extent to which Menno’s ministry expanded Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine or perhaps brought it to “sounder concepts,” hesitantly seeking the origins of Lower Rhine Anabaptism in Switzerland, instead of Munsterite/Melchiorite or Waldensian origins.^[59] Successive biographers followed the framed story of Menno’s religious leadership as a refugee itinerant missionary on the Lower Rhine between 1544 and 1546, quietly working to expand his movement.^[60] Echoing Ottius’s Annales Anabaptistici (1672), Cornelius Krahn acknowledges that Menno’s influence south of Cologne was only relatively true during his lifetime. However, it was different in the communities from Brussels to Danzig on the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts.^[61] This framing of Menno’s influence mainly came from the polemic pen of Reformed leaders from Emden. À Lasco wrote “[…] I know that nowadays Menno mainly resides in the diocese of Cologne and seduces many there,” and Martin Micron “[…] that Menno’s empire stretched far and wide in all coastal regions from the outer borders of Flanders to Danzig.”^[62] This portrayal is repeated in contemporary biographies and surveys.^[63] The catalogue of an exhibition that aimed to provide an overview of the Anabaptist movement along the Rhine in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries presents Menno Simons as “the great leader of the tolerant and nonviolent wing of Anabaptism’” (Figure 1).

Figure 1:

Menno Simons appropriated as the religious leader of Anabaptism along the Rhine (Frontpage of L’Anabaptisme dans la Vallée du Rhin de 1525 à 1750 [Strasbourg: Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, 1984]).

Such modern expressions of Menno’s dominance are not supported by the contemporary evidence. For example, the Anabaptist confession, handed over to the Kempen city council in 1545, in which the Anabaptist position is expressed on several pages, is often associated with Menno. Tewes Ruebsam’s confession of 1545 reports that he was “rebaptized” by an unknown person from Friesland, within the city of Kempen.^[64] Goeters concludes that, although this statement is not very clear, it can be assumed that Menno was in Kempen at the time and was baptizing there.^[65] Apparently, Goeters was unaware that the co-author of the Kempen Confession, Michiel Oistwart, identified by Knottnerus as Michiel “de cramer,” a vendor, whose origin was in Groningen or Friesland, was baptizing in this area.^[66] Hardenberg, when he was a Reformed pastor in Kempen from 1545 until 1546, wrote to the archbishop’s privy counsellor on November 26, 1546 that there were Anabaptists and that they were quiet and lived in silence.^[67] Hardenberg would certainly have referred to Menno, whom he met as a rural (still Catholic) priest if he had played the part assigned to him in Kempen.^[68] Again, it is difficult to draw unambiguous conclusions from such limited data. Goeters strongly argued for Menno’s influence in the Kempen Confession. Goeters’s theorem has taken on a life of its own in historiography, while Menno’s role in Kempen can at least be questioned based on similar other uncertain sources, such as the role played by Michiel Oistwart. On the other hand, comparison of the Kempen Confession with, for instance Melchior Hoffman’s Die ordonnantie Godts (1530), Bernard Rothmann’s Bekentones des Globens und Lebens der Gemein Christe zu Monster (1534), Jan van Tricht’s Een nut ende profijtelijck boeckxen or Adam Pastor’s “Onderscheetboeck” (1551) could lead to different conclusions.^[69] These comparisons might suggest that Menno was not as dominant in influence as previously thought. The case of the Kempen Confession is in itself unique. Whether it radiates the spirit of Menno or provides insight into the Anabaptist thinking on the Lower Rhine in the Melchiorite/Munsterite tradition of inter alia Adam Pastor, Gillis van Aken and/or Theunis van Hastenrath, is difficult to determine in the absence of supplemental information. To substantiate Menno’s presence on the Lower Rhine, reference is also made to Menno’s reply to Gellius Faber, in which Menno indicates that À Lasco and Hardenberg prevented him from having public conversations in Bonn and Wesel.^[70] However, this hindrance does not necessarily imply that he resided on the Lower Rhine.

Monge denies Menno Simons’s presence in Cologne in the 1540s based on meticulous source research.^[71] There are also no records of the presence or influence of Menno Simons from the 1540s and 1550s from Aachen.^[72] Thus, Menno’s stay in Aachen-Cologne from 1544 to 1546 is a construction that is not per se incorrect or untrue, but for which conclusive evidence is lacking. The only lead for Menno’s stay on the Lower Rhine is the short visit to the network of Theunis van Hastenrath in the Vissersweerd. Menno spoke for an hour and then left again by boat, which evokes a very different picture from the appropriated assumption that Menno founded congregations on the Lower Rhine and even in the Rhineland (see the historicized portrait, Figure 1). That said, Menno was ferried from the Vissersweert to Roermond, which was a junction on the roads from Antwerp and Den Bosch to Cologne.^[73] After all, Menno was not a wanted man on the Lower Rhine, unlike Gillis van Aken.^[74]

Menno’s role as an influencer on the Lower Rhine in the 1540s and 1550s appears to be quite limited, as evidenced by the case studies. The interrogations of persecuted Anabaptists from the networks of Gillis van Aken in Antwerp and Amsterdam, those of Adam Pastor in Gelre, and those of Theunis van Hastenrath in Jülich indicate that the name Menno Simons as an Anabaptist bishop is not unknown, but that there was little or no personal contact and that his books were undoubtedly almost unknown at the local level.^[75] Therefore, the question is how widespread Menno’s publications on the Lower Rhine were and what role the written text played in the transmission of Anabaptist ideas in what was still an oral (hearsay) tradition?^[76] Ultimately, the dissemination of printed information was not tied to pre-existing social networks to the same extent as oral accounts.^[77] The individual Anabaptist confessions evidence no great influence of Menno Simons on the Lower Rhine: yes, he has been heard of; no, they have never met him and certainly have not read any of his works. Due to the frankness of the interviewees, who did not want to recant and therefore had little or nothing to lose, there is hardly any reason to doubt their statements, which could imply that Menno Simons had not acquired any legitimizing symbolic significance on the Lower Rhine.^[78] Similarly, Menno Simons does not appear in the vernacular (chambers of rhetoric) drama, even though Melchiorite Anabaptism does.^[79]

Even fewer leads can be found for the proposition that Menno and Dirk Philips were on the Lower Rhine together. Referring to the opening sentence originating from the Svccessio Anabaptistica “remaining together and sowing the seeds of error daily, between the year 1542 and 1547,” Jacobus ten Doornkaat Koolmaat assumes that Menno and Dirk would have traveled together to the Rhineland in the spring of 1544.^[80] Here on the Lower Rhine, Menno and Dirk would have discovered that there was a large Anabaptist movement stretching from Switzerland and South Germany to Moravia.^[81]

Indeed, it is undeniable that Menno and Dirk came into contact with Anabaptist bishops on the Lower Rhine during the period between 1542 and 1547. In that last year there were meetings of the Anabaptist bishops from the Lower Rhine and those from the north in Goch and in Emden. True, when it became too dangerous for him during his stay in Groningen and then in East Friesland, Menno consequently traveled around in Westphalia, where the persecution of Anabaptists was not as high on the political agenda as in the domain of Charles V. The case studies on the Lower Rhine bishops show Menno managed to connect with existing Anabaptist networks there, but he merely attempted to forge coalitions with existing Anabaptist networks rather than founding Mennonite communities.

Moreover, the banning of Adam Pastor at the bishops’ conference in Goch in 1547, and thereafter the meeting at Adam Pastor’s request in Lübeck in 1552, led to a definitive split between the bishops from the north and those from the Lower Rhine. Lemke Cremers (bishop successor of Theunis van Hastenrath) and his colleague Zylis Jacobs from the Eifel initiated another attempt at reconciliation, for which they traveled to Menno in Mecklenburg in 1557.^[82] A correspondence followed, consisting of a letter from Zylis and Lemke (1557) to Menno and answers from Dirk Philips (February 5, 1558) and Menno Simons (June 11, 1558).^[83] Menno then traveled to Cologne in 1559, which resulted in a definitive break with the Overlander Anabaptists and the associated networks in the Eifel and Alsace.^[84] Menno refers to Overlanders as the group of Anabaptists who had distanced themselves from him and Dirk Philips on the Lower Rhine. The origin of the name Overlander Anabaptists can therefore be traced back to the break between Menno and Dirk with the Lower Rhine bishops, which dates back to the meeting in Goch in 1547; only later did this become synonymous with the High German Anabaptists and the Swiss Brethren.^[85] Thus, the contact that Theunis van Hastenrath had accomplished in the late 1540s to bring the Overlanders and their networks into communication with the bishops of the Lower Rhine and the north was the last, but also the most comprehensive example of an ultimately failed effort at coalition formation. Religious leadership was therefore regionally defined in the Lower Rhine region and much less overarching than the historiography would have it. It is to this historiographical tradition that the focus shifts next.

4 The Narrative of the Dutch/Northern German Anabaptist Past: A Historiographical Perspective

The status quaestionis in Dutch Anabaptist historical research is that as a result of the increasing political tolerance of Anabaptism since 1579, the Dutch Anabaptists conformed and assimilated to a high degree to the Reformed character of the Dutch Republic.^[86] The majority became more liberal and preferred to call themselves “doopsgezind” rather than “Mennist,” no longer identifying with Menno’s legacy.^[87] It was not until the early 1700s that Dutch Anabaptists began to write their own history in any formal way, primarily in the circles of confessional Mennonites who had broken away from the non-confessional Doopsgezinden in 1664. They published Menno’s collected works, the Opera Omnia, which was edited with mystical-pious recommendations for the last time in 1681, which helped establish Menno as a normative authority in Dutch Anabaptist memory.^[88] However, even among Menno’s followers, his significance as a religious leader was relatively less pronounced.^[89] Herman Schijn (1662–1727), a minister of the confessional congregation in Amsterdam, wrote the earliest survey of Dutch “Mennonite” history in two volumes, which was first translated from Latin to Dutch.^[90] Gerardus Maatschoen’s (ca. 1702–1754) expanded edition acquired a larger readership.^[91] These works were not history in the modern sense, but primarily apologetic in nature, seeking to refute any connection between Menno, the German Peasants’ War, and Münster. Their main aim was to convince the intolerant Swiss authorities, who persecuted and expelled the Swiss Anabaptists, as well as their Dutch compatriots, particularly the Dutch Reformed clergy and academia, of Mennonites’ loyalty and commitment to peace.^[92] With the emergence of a more confessional Dutch Anabaptist-Mennonite awareness in the seventeenth century, historiography focused on Menno Simons as a “virtuous Dutch citizen.”^[93] Menno’s significance as a religious leader was reduced and framed within the context of the national (Protestant) tradition of moderation.^[94] This Protestant perspective may explain the elaboration of the medieval Waldensian lineage in the eighteenth century, which sought to give the Anabaptist principles a more respectable heritage by emphasizing similarities between the two movements. In line with Protestant historiography influenced by the French example, the Waldensians were considered precursors of the Reformation, and also of peaceable Anabaptism. They were seen as preceding the reforms of Luther and Calvin, representing a longer tradition of continuity of the true Christian Church.^[95] Some Reformed historians even accepted this Waldensian thesis.^[96] Yet Menno Simons was still revered in the eighteenth century.^[97] However, this claim of Menno’s heritage was limited to confessional Mennonites in the northern part of Holland, Friesland and Groningen, and their related denominations in Germany and beyond.

In the nineteenth century, the emerging professional historiography was characterized more by the collecting and selection of new information in the archives than by its interpretation. The Leiden historian Robert Fruin (1823–1899), who was the first professor of Dutch history, and in his wake the professor of Anabaptist history Jacob de Hoop Scheffer (1819–1893) held the belief that there was a need for extensive preparatory research and detailed source analysis before a synthesis could be achieved.^[98] De Hoop Scheffer played a pivotal role in establishing the study of Dutch Anabaptism. This is particularly apparent from the work of his college friend, doopsgezind minister and church historian Christiaan Sepp (1820–1890), whose study on the Wassenberg preacher Hendric Rol still has not been surpassed.^[99] Menno’s first biographer Alle Cramer (1805–1894) relied heavily on existing secondary literature, particularly Schijn and Maatschoen’s Geschiedenis.^[100] Cramer rejected any association between Menno and Münster, emphasizing Menno’s role as a moralist and advocate for a non-dogmatic Church. He also considered Menno’s teachings as outdated and this perception persisted until the twentieth century.^[101] However, since the establishment of the Doopsgezinde Bijdragen in 1861, scholars like De Hoop Scheffer, Sepp, and Geert Frerichs (1836–1906) made significant biographical discoveries about Menno Simons. Steven Blaupot ten Cate (1807–1884) attempted a synthesis based on considerable new source material in his Geschiedenis der Doopsgezinden, although his portrayal of Menno was influenced by Cramer’s biography.^[102] A pivotal moment came with the publication of Vos’s Menno biography in 1914, which presented extensive archival research.^[103] It revealed the Melchiorite origin, and especially the involvement of Dutch Anabaptism in Münster, but the book still lacked a cohesive perspective and continued to emphasize Menno’s anti-confessional piety.^[104] Since then, very little new historical information about Menno Simons has been added to Vos’s collected data.^[105]

In 1932, Willem Kühler (1874–1946), professor of Anabaptism at the Doopsgezind Seminarium and Church History at the University of Amsterdam, published the first comprehensive survey of Anabaptist history in the sixteenth century.^[106] His work strongly supported the liberal perspective of his nineteenth-century academic predecessors. Successors in the field of Anabaptist history, such as Nanne van der Zijp (1900–1965) and Henk Meihuizen (1906–1983), continued to promote this liberal image.^[107] While Kühler’s views were well-regarded in the Netherlands, they faced strong criticism overseas in North America.^[108] Samme Zijlstra (1953–2001), a senior researcher in Dutch Anabaptism, subsequently conducted extensive research on the development of Anabaptist history as an “identity.” However, his work primarily focused on Mennonite confessionalism and orthodox perspectives under the influence of Sjouke Voolstra (1942–2004), who was the incumbent professor of Anabaptism at the time.^[109] Throughout the twentieth century, it became evident that Mennonites selectively drew from Menno’s legacy to suit their own needs at different times, rather than adhering to a universally accepted Menno tradition.^[110] This retrospective framing created an “invented tradition” and shaped the “historical memory” of their Anabaptist past.^[111]

This territorial northern – Small Netherlandish – perspective continued to dominate the framework of Anabaptist history. Melchior Hoffman’s role as the founder of Dutch Anabaptism and the decisive Dutch involvement in the Anabaptists’ takeover of government in Münster (1534–1535) were recognized – albeit hesitantly.^[112] Subsequent historiography fully embraced the discussion of the polygenesis of Anabaptism, focusing on the area of the later Dutch Republic. This aligned with the continuity of a nineteenth-century nationalist paradigm in Dutch Anabaptist historiography, which opposed the monogenesis of all Anabaptism originating in Switzerland.^[113] Towards the end of the twentieth century, regional, local and cross-border history gradually received more attention, including in Dutch historiography.^[114] However, recent local research on Anabaptism in city and region has primarily concentrated on German areas.^[115]

The national liberal Protestant reflection of the past, which several generations of Doopsgezinden experienced during the nineteenth century’s “longing for history,” portrayed the Dutch nation they inhabited as the desired (final) outcome of a historical process.^[116] Consequently, Anabaptism in the nearby Lower Rhine region, which had largely disappeared due to re-Catholicization in the seventeenth century, vanished from the Dutch historiographical landscape. Furthermore, since the 1840s, the liberal civil society perspective of Dutch Anabaptists aligned with the new national framework of conciliation in the historiography of the (young) Kingdom of the Netherlands as an integrated, centralized and formally-ruled nation state.^[117] At the same time, the dominant Reformed Church tolerated Catholics, and dissenters from Anabaptist, Lutheran, and Remonstrant traditions began to define and appropriate their own national histories. This led to individual confessional currents constructing a self-image of their minority position in collective memory. Nationalist confessional historiography emerged as an expression of self-awareness within a sense of harmonious co-existence.^[118] Reformed historiography underscored the foundational role of Calvinism in nation-building, while Catholic historiography accentuated loyalty to the nation and the (Roman) Church.^[119] Anabaptist historiography embraced a cultured, virtuously simple image, aligning with the national-liberal (influenced by Protestantism) conciliatory approach.^[120] This approach was in line with the positivist or scientifically impartial attitude, shaped by the concepts of Robert Fruin.^[121]

At the same time, in the 1820s and 1830s, due to the new anachronistic borders of the Kingdoms of Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, the histories of both banks of the Meuse underwent adaptations in Belgian and German/Prussian historiography to suit different civic national preferences and sensibilities, which were projected onto the sixteenth century.^[122] In 1957, Léon-Ernest Halkin (1906–1998) drew attention to the history of Anabaptism in the Southern Netherlands, including the bishopric of Liège.^[123] He showed an east-to-west bond between the rise of Melchiorite Anabaptism in the Duchy of Jülich, the Meuse Valley, and the cities of Aachen, Maastricht, Hasselt, Antwerp, and Ghent. In contrast, Vos (1920), Verheyden (1961) and Decavele (1975) argue that Melchiorite Anabaptism in the Southern Netherlands originated from the Northern Netherlands.^[124] Marjan Reimer-Blok argues that there are distinctive Flemish Anabaptist characteristics in the 1550s such as the avoidance of using the term Trinity about which Scripture was silent, and emphasizing the necessity of suffering and the authority of the lay members, particularly through the imposition of the ban.^[125] However, while acknowledging the primacy of the religious leadership of Menno Simons, she questions the reluctance of the Mennonite leadership to appoint bishops in Flanders.^[126] Vos had already concluded that in the south, Anabaptist circles were much more independent, with authority lying with the bishops in the north and with the community through the work of other pastors in the south.^[127] Consequently, questions also arise regarding the structure of Anabaptist religious leadership in Flanders during the 1540s–1550s.^[128]

This development in Flanders finds its counterpart in the Rhineland. Since the pre-revolutionary era (known as the “Vormärz” 1830–1848) in the Rhineland province of Rheinpreußen (1815–1848), a patriotic image of the Rhine was constructed, which permeated wide circles and extended beyond the sixteenth-century territory of the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle of the German Empire. This territory was characterized by a dominant territorial complex comprising the united duchies of (Gelre-)Jülich-Cleves-Berg and their neighboring lands.^[129] Subsequently, in the late nineteenth century, the Heimatbewegung (homeland movement) fostered regional (Catholic) awareness within the new 1815 borders of the Rheinpreußen province.^[130] The preface to Karl Rembert’s 1893 inaugural dissertation on Anabaptism in the Duchy of Jülich aligned with this territorial program. In addition, in 1899, he published an extended edition that encompassed a larger region of the Lower Rhine.^[131]

The genesis of Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine, as constructed by Rembert, was rooted in late medieval mysticism and predated Luther’s influence and the emergence of Protestantism.^[132] On the other hand, Franz Petri, influenced by research on regional tribal and folklore culture (Volkskunde), argued that there were no predominant Rhenish or internal German elements among the early supporters of reform on the Meuse prior to Luther’s time.^[133] Similar to Petri, but not from a volkstümlich but from a confessional Lutheran perspective, Gerhard Goeters suggested that Anabaptism in the Duchy of Jülich originated from Münster, where it was adopted from the Northern Netherlands. This perspective aimed to establish continuity between sacramentalism in the western region of Jülich and Lutheran Protestantism. Even if there had been pre-Munsterite Anabaptism, it would likely have originated from the south, read Strasbourg.^[134] Astrid von Schlachta’s recent survey on Anabaptism from the Reformation to the twenty-first century does not include early Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine.^[135] Thus, the previous understanding of the cross-border Lower Rhine as a coherent historical reality of Anabaptism has largely faded into oblivion in German Anabaptist historiography, except for the recognition of the rise of Anabaptists in Krefeld since the seventeenth century.^[136]

Nevertheless, some solid studies on cross-border local Anabaptist history appeared in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The recognition and disclosure of archives brought to light sources, including trial reports of interrogations of captured Anabaptists, which provided new information. The works of Habets (1877), Rembert (1899), Vos (1914), and Bax (1937) paid less attention to national perspectives, encouraging a more area-oriented approach that transcended national borders.^[137] Habets, however, may have intentionally exaggerated regional (Catholic) provincialism in contrast to the self-awareness of the (northern) Dutch (Protestant) national consciousness.^[138] Surprisingly, these works have received little to no attention in Anabaptist historiography.^[139] Despite being outdated, they remain valuable studies that challenge the dominant Menno-centered historical narrative, and their findings should be further examined. The history of Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine was disregarded as a remote and peripheral area, perhaps even overlooked entirely, except for Peter Nissen, who remarked on the continuity of Melchiorism between the Meuse and Roer rivers.^[140]

During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the connection between Anabaptism and the Lower Rhine was primarily established by non-Anabaptists through the narrative of the “sending” of Anabaptist bishops to the region. However, this perception was completely forgotten in the eighteenth-century Anabaptist historiography of the “Dutch Republic-oriented” perspective, which reconstructed a new form of continuity from the past based on the present context.^[141] As a result, Anabaptist bishops like Adam Pastor and Gillis van Aken were marginalized, and Theunis van Hastenrath, who only attended the bishops’ meeting in Goch in 1547, was exclusively mentioned in the martyrs’ books as one of the many martyrs, without being identified as a bishop in the Meuse Valley.^[142] The Mennonite Martyrs’ Books stand as an exceptional case in contrast to the prevailing Small Netherlandish perspective, including victims from all Anabaptist regions, with more than two-thirds being of Flemish descent.^[143] On the other hand, the image of Menno as the regenerator of Anabaptism apparently required substantiation through evidence, such as an association with a place or date, an object, or a person, to make the narrative more plausible.^[144] This approach was then also extended to the Lower Rhine.

5 Conclusion

In this article, the main objective was to challenge the prevailing convention in Anabaptist historiography that Menno Simons and Dirk Philips played a significant role in stabilizing the Anabaptist movement and establishing an extensive network in the Habsburg Netherlands/North Germany, focusing on the case of the Lower Rhine in the 1540s and 1550s. The narrative that portrays Menno as the regenerator of post-Münster Anabaptism, encapsulated in the phrase “Menno and Dirck make other bishops,” has been widely accepted from the Svccessio Anabaptistica (1603) to the present day. However, this narrative has been paradigmatically challenged by demonstrating that on the Lower Rhine, Melchiorite/Münsterite Anabaptism developed independently in decentralized local networks from the 1530s to the 1540s and 1550s, led by local bishops, such as Adam Pastor, Gillis van Aken and Theunis van Hastenrath, who had their own cross-border networks, albeit with some overlap. This does not imply that there were no interactions or influences from other regional bishops such as Menno and Dirk. Heinrich Forsthoff (1871–1942) even argues that Adam Pastor was the initiator who “gathered the leaders for a formal Anabaptist synod in 1547.”^[145] Historiography claims that Menno Simons resided on the Lower Rhine between 1544 and 1546 to establish Anabaptist communities, but the evidence supporting this claim is marginal. Menno Simons and Dirk Philips attempted to establish a supralocal centralized “rule by bishops” but failed due to disagreements regarding content and organization. This failure is characteristic of Anabaptism, which, by definition, was not based on doctrinal uniformity and could not rely on government-protected organizational structures and information infrastructures.

As there is no comprehensive reception history of Menno Simons’s work, it can only be provisionally concluded that his influence gradually receded into the background. His direct influence as a newcomer to the Anabaptist movement, particularly in the provinces of Friesland, Groningen, and East Friesland, and later as a propagandist for one of the underlying Anabaptist movements, had already diminished during his lifetime. Nonetheless, his writings, both individually and collectively, became a legacy and the ideological foundation of Mennonitism in the seventeenth century, and he became a prominent figure and, to some, a celebrity.^[146] Ultimately, his name persisted as a symbol of religious memory and an imagined community of Menno Simons-people, particularly outside of Europe, giving rise to the concept of Mennonitism as a retrospectively created concept.^[147] Of course, the name itself – Mennonite – suggests the assumption that Menno was dominant.

The façade constructed in Mennonite historiography, which emphasizes the mono-genesis of a peaceful Anabaptist community led solely by Menno Simons and Dirk Philips in the Habsburg Netherlands/Northern Germany in the 1540s and 1550s, needs to be revised to acknowledge the polyphony of a polygenetic coalition movement comprising networks centered around Anabaptist bishops in Melchiorite Anabaptism.^[148] Consequently, this article asserts that the historiographical portrayal of Menno Simons and Dirk Philips as religious leaders of Dutch/Northern German Anabaptism is rooted in an imagined historical construct.^[149] Furthermore, it is noteworthy that comparable processes took place in Flanders and the Waterland region, situated north of Amsterdam. This regional perspective, which goes beyond contemporary national borders, provides an academic exploration of the local beginnings and progression of clandestine Anabaptism as a religious alternative to the mainstream confessions.