Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:21:26.914Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Double Honor: Elite Hutterite Women in the Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2010

Adam Darlage
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Studies of early modern Anabaptism have shown that many Anabaptists sought to model their communities after the examples of the New Testament and the early church before the “fall” of the church into a coercive, sword-wielding institution through the person of Constantine in the fourth century c.e. The Anabaptists claimed that one had to voluntarily choose to become a Christian through believer's baptism and suffer for his or her faith just as the martyrs of old had done in the face of Roman persecution. During the course of the sixteenth century, their Protestant and Roman Catholic enemies did not disappoint, as hundreds of Anabaptists were executed for their rejection of “Christendom.” To the “magisterial” Christians, Anabaptists were dangerous heretics because they denied the God-given power of spiritual and secular authorities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 79 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 753 - 782
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For example, see Dipple, Geoffrey, “Just as in the Time of the Apostles”: Uses of History in the Radical Reformation (Kitchener: Pandora, 2005)Google Scholar.

2 George Huntston Williams popularized the term “Magisterial” as a descriptor of the “state” churches of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin in contrast to the “Radical” communities of the Anabaptists, Spiritualists, Anti-Trinitarians, and others who generally did not ally themselves with the secular authorities, The Radical Reformation, 3rd ed. (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1992).

3 See esp. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, trans. Kirsopp Lake, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), 1:5.14–5.18.6.

4 Braght, Thieleman J. van, The Bloody Theater: Or, Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians: Who Baptized Only upon Confession of Faith, and Who Suffered and Died for the Testimony of Jesus, their Saviour, from the Time of Christ to the Year A.D. 1660. 9th ed. (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1972)Google Scholar.

5 The theme of “manly courage” runs throughout Anabaptist martyr narratives; see esp. Joldersma, Hermina and Grijp, Louis, eds. and trans., Elisabeth's Manly Courage: Testimonials and Songs of Martyred Anabaptist Women in the Low Countries (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. See also Epp, Marlene and Roberts, H. Julia, “Women in the Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren,” in Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers, ed. Snyder, C. Arnold and Hecht, Linda A. Huebert (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1996), 208–9Google Scholar.

6 On prophecy in Luke-Acts, cf. Stronstad, Roger, The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke's Charismatic Theology (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic, 1999)Google Scholar; and Johnson, Luke Timothy, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1991)Google Scholar.

7 On Ursula Jost, see esp. Williams, Radical Reformation, 391–92.

8 On this point, cf. Mack, Phyllis, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

9 Based on Matthew 10:32–33, Nicodemism was the practice of outward conformity to the Church but an inward denial of its truth; see esp. Zagorin, Perez, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Sigrun Haude notes that “the social profile of an Anabaptist marriage was for the most part a reflection of contemporary society. Wives were to be obedient to their husbands, serve them, and be their housekeepers,” “Gender Roles and Perspectives,” in A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700, ed. John D. Roth and James M. Stayer (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 453.

11 Peter Walpot, leader of the Hutterites from 1565 to 1578, offers the most compelling defense of the Hutterites' practice of Gütergemeinschaft in The Great Article Book (1577). Part 3 of that work, “True Yieldedness and Community of Goods,” is reproduced in English translation in Early Anabaptist Spirituality: Selected Writings, in The Classics of Western Spirituality, ed. and trans. Daniel Liechty (New York: Paulist, 1994), 137–96.

12 Epp and Roberts, “Women in the Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren,” 212.

13 Bender, Harold S., “Women, Status of,” in The Mennonite Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Reference Work on the Anabaptist-Mennonite Movement (hereafter ME), ed. Dyck, Cornelius J. and Martin, Dennis D., 4 vols. (Hillsboro, Kans.: Mennonite Brethren Pub. House, 1955–1959), 4:972Google Scholar.

14 Weber, Max, The Sociology of Religion, intro. Parsons, Talcott (Boston: Beacon, 1963)Google Scholar; on the subject of women prophets in various world religions, Weber contends that “only in very rare cases does this practice continue beyond the first stage of a religious community's formation, when the pneumatic manifestations of charisma are valued as hallmarks of specifically religious exaltation. Thereafter, as routinization and regimentation of community relationships set in, a reaction takes place against pneumatic manifestations among women, which come to be regarded as dishonorable and morbid,” 104.

15 Haude, “Gender Roles and Perspectives,” 437; Haude cites Linda Huebert Hecht, “An Extraordinary Lay Leader: The Life and Work of Helene of Freyberg, Sixteenth Century Noblewoman and Anabaptist from the Tirol,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 66, no. 3 (July 1992): 312–41; and Jelsma, Auke, Frontiers of the Reformation: Dissidence and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998)Google Scholar. See also Hecht, Huebert, “A Brief Moment in Time: Informal Leadership and Shared Authority among Sixteenth Century Anabaptist Women,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 17 (1999): 52–74Google Scholar; Sprunger, Keith L., “God's Powerful Army of the Weak: Anabaptist Women of the Radical Reformation,” in Triumph Over Silence: Women in Protestant History, ed. Greaves, Robert L. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985), 44–74Google Scholar; Gordon Zook, “Current Patterns of Shared Leadership in Mennonite Church Congregations” (D.Min. thesis, Lancaster Theological Seminary, 1989), 5.

16 Schlachta's, Astrid vonHutterische Konfession Und Tradition (1578–1619): Etabliertes Leben Zwischen Ordnung Und Ambivalenz (Mainz: Von Zabern, 2003)Google Scholar is of particular note with respect to the institutionalization of Hutterite Anabaptism. Although she does not use the routinization thesis per se, she argues for a Hutterite “confessionalization” beginning in the late sixteenth century. First articulated by Ernst Walter Zeeden but popularized by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, the confessionalization thesis is indebted to the work of Weber and Ernst Troeltsch on the formation of religious institutions. It seeks to account for the political, social, and religious processes through which the various new post-Reformation “confessions,” in concert with secular authorities, defined themselves through creedal statements, ordinances, ritual performances, and social discipline of their subjects. The Hutterites rejected the “world” and therefore did not officially rely on any “state” support or overt coercion, but they nonetheless established a clear leadership structure, strict religious practices, a social hierarchy, and forms of internal social discipline. On confessionalization, see esp. Reinhard, , “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomena einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68 (1977): 226–51Google Scholar; Schilling, , Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung: eine Fallstudie über das Verhältnis von religiösem und sozialem Wandel in der Frühneuzeit am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 48 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1981)Google Scholar. For an overview of confessionalization as it applies to studies of Anabaptism, see Michael Driedger, “Anabaptists and the Early Modern State: A Long-Term View,” in Roth and Stayer, Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 507–44.

17 As Werner Packull points out, “silence as to the female companions who bore children, worked alongside their husbands, and, like them, suffered persecution and martyrdom, was the rule rather than the exception in Hutterite sources,” Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 241.

18 G. H. Williams is notable for his claim of equality between men and women in Radical Reformation, 762. An early critique of this model is Irwin, Joyce L., Womanhood in Radical Protestantism, 1525–1675 (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1979)Google Scholar. Irwin is critical of scholars who gave “the impression that Anabaptism and other radical movements changed the status of women,” xv. On this point, see also Harrison, Wes, “The Role of Women in Anabaptist Thought and Practice: The Hutterite Experience of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992): 49–69Google Scholar, esp. 49–50.

19 Haude, , “Gender Roles and Perspectives,” 437. Haude is especially critical of the thesis in an earlier essay, “Anabaptist Women—Radical Women?” in Infinite Boundaries: Order, Disorder, and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture, ed. Reinhart, Max (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998)Google Scholar. She notes the difficulty of assigning “early” and “late” periods in different geographical regions and argues that the thesis relies too heavily on male prescripts. For Haude, the thesis is “neither helpful nor generally applicable,” 317.

20 The Mennonite scholars Dorothy Yoder Nyce and Lynda Nyce highlight the work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and other feminist theorists on issues of power and patriarchy in religious communities. For example, they cite Schüssler Fiorenza's notion of “kyriarchy,” which moves beyond male power over women and includes all the “rule of the emperor/master/lord/father/husband over his subordinates,” “Power and Authority in Mennonite Ecclesiology: A Feminist Perspective,” in Power, Authority, and the Anabaptist Tradition, ed. Benjamin W. Redekop and Calvin W. Redekop (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 157; cf. Fiorenza, Schüssler, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1994), 14, 62, 196Google Scholar.

21 For example, Snyder, C. Arnold writes that “in the end, societal assumptions about the ‘proper’ role of women lent the weight of cultural legitimacy to the establishment of a biblical patriarchal church order,” Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora, 1995), 269Google Scholar.

22 A good example of this narrative form is Huebert Hecht, “A Brief Moment in Time.” Huebert Hecht notes that Anabaptist women had a “‘window of opportunity,’ a brief moment in time,” in which to exercise leadership within early modern Anabaptist communities, 66.

23 C. Arnold Snyder, “Margeret Hottinger of Zollikon,” in Snyder and Huebert Hecht, Profiles of Anabaptist Women, 51–52.

24 This sentimental privileging of the Spiritualist, charismatic period may reflect contemporary attitudes toward women within certain Anabaptist communities of faith, but I am not sure how it advances our historical knowledge of early modern Anabaptist women. It assumes a theological telos for Anabaptism that Anabaptist communities fail(ed) to live up to, and that is a theological argument, not a historical one. Others have made similar observations, including Merry Wiesner-Hanks. She noticed a “somewhat hagiographic style” in a few authors who wrote for Profiles of Anabaptist Women, although she adds that “most approach their subjects more dispassionately, noting their limitations as well as their heroism,” review of Profiles of Anabaptist Women, edited by C. Arnold Snyder and Linda A. Huebert Hecht, The Sixteenth Century Journal 30, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 1171–73.

25 Cf. von Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession Und Tradition, 128; Harrison, “Role of Women,” 64–67.

26 Haude, “Gender Roles and Perspectives,” 438–41; cf. Jennifer H. Reed, “Dutch Anabaptist Female Martyrs and their Responses to the Reformation” (M.A. thesis, University of Florida, 1991).

27 For example, in “Anabaptist Women—Radical Women?” Haude argues that “Anabaptist women used male perceptions of female simple-mindedness to negotiate advantages for themselves and their families,” 313. This observation is not limited to an early or late period in the history of Anabaptism.

28 An excellent example of the use of male prescriptive literature to learn more about “Radical” women (that is, Anabaptists, Spiritualists, Puritans, and Quakers) is Irwin's Womanhood in Radical Protestantism. Among many others, she includes texts from Balthasar Hubmaier, Menno Simons, Caspar Schwenkfeld, and Sebastian Franck.

29 Helen Martens, “Women in the Hutterite Song Book,” in Snyder and Huebert Hecht, Profiles of Anabaptist Women, 222–43.

30 Werner Packull, “‘We Are Born to Work Like the Birds to Fly’: The Anabaptist-Hutterite Ideal Woman,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 73, no. 1 (January 1999): 75–86.

31 Packull, “We Are Born to Work Like the Birds to Fly,” 80.

32 Haude, “Gender Roles and Perspectives,” 440.

33 Stayer, James argues that “the community was everything, and the family was as weak as it could be without disappearing entirely,” The German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991), 146Google Scholar.

34 Many historians have also sought comparisons between Anabaptism and medieval monasticism because both represent efforts to return to the piety and ascetic ideals of the early church. See esp. Kenneth Ronald Davis, Anabaptism and Asceticism: A Study in Intellectual Origins (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald, 1974). Others have highlighted the similarities between the economic life of the medieval monastery and the Hutterite Haushaben. John W. Bennett argues that the “original economic image of the [Hutterite] colony was that of a self-sufficient island in the midst of the interdependent economy of ‘the outside’ with its specialized production and commerce. This concept had its historical antecedents in the medieval monastic community, and in the manors and estates of the nobility of the sixteenth century,” Hutterian Brethren: The Agricultural Economy and Social Organization of a Communal People (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), 161.

35 Several authors have noticed the affinities between the Hutterites and craft guilds. See esp. Plumper, Hans-Dieter, Die Gütergemeinschaft bei den Täufer des 16. Jahrhunderts (Göppingen: Alfred Kümmerle, 1972), 129–58Google Scholar; Mullett, Michael, Radical Religious Movements in Early Modern Europe (London: Allen and Unwinn, 1980), 33–54Google Scholar.

36 On “sacral corporatism,” see esp. Brady, Thomas A., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520–1555 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 3–19Google Scholar. According to Bob Scribner, sacral corporatism “embodied the notion that salvation and material well-being were achieved in working for the common good in and through a corporative endeavor in which the selfish interests of individuals were subordinated to the good of the whole community,” “Practical Utopias: Pre-Modern Communism and the Reformation,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (1994): 743–75, 770.

37 Pánek, Jaroslav, “The Question of Tolerance in Bohemia and Moravia in the Age of the Reformation,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Grell, Ole Peter and Scribner, Robert W. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 244Google Scholar; cf. Scribner, “Practical Utopias,” 765.

38 On the Jagiellonians' weakness with respect to the estates, see Maček, , “The Monarchy of the Estates,” in Bohemia in History, ed. Teich, Mikuláš (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 98–103Google Scholar.

39 Josef Válka has called this tolerant attitude in Moravia a “kind of non-confessional Christianity” as well as “supradenominational Christianity,” “Moravia and the Crisis of the Estates' System,” in Crown, Church, and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. R. J. W. Evans and T. V. Thomas (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 152–53; cf. Válka, “Rudolfine Culture,” in Teich, Bohemia in History, 120; Thomas Winkelbauer describes the rationale of the Moravian nobles as a commitment to an “über-konfessionellen Christentum,” “Überkonfessionelles Christentum in der 2. Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts in Mähren und seinen Nachbarländern,” in Dějiny Moravy a Matice Moravská: Problémy a Perspektivy, ed. Libor Jan (Brno: Matic moravská, 2000), 131–46.

40 Packull observes that the fortunes of the Anabaptists in Moravia “vacillated inversely with the Turkish threat and in accordance with the tug of war between local noble interests and the strength of central authority,” Hutterite Beginnings, 73.

41 The Hutterites “called Moravia the ‘blessed land,’ the ‘promised land,’ the ‘pious land,’” Clasen, Claus-Peter, Anabaptism, A Social History 1525–1618: Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972), 235Google Scholar.

42 Packull calls this arrangement a “symbiotic trade-off” in his point that “opportunities were provided by feudal lordlings who offered the hunted heretics religious tolerance in return for economic benefits,” Hutterite Beginnings, 66. Bob Scribner also describes Hutterite–lord relations as symbiotic. He argues that the Hutterite were like the birds that ate from the mouths of crocodiles in an “arrangement of mutual convenience. They were allowed to remain, as long as they did not become an irritant to their host,” “Practical Utopias,” 773.

43 The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren (hereafter Chronicle), vol. 1, ed. the Hutterite Brethren (Rifton, N.Y.: Plough Publishing House, 1987), v. It was begun in the late 1560s by Kaspar Braitmichel and continued by others after his death in 1573.

44 Ibid., 47–49. Hubmaier's group became known as the Schwertler (sword-bearers), while Hut's followers were called the Stäbler (staff-bearers).

45 Ibid., 80–81.

46 The proto-Hutterites called Wiedemann's group the Austerlitz Brethren. This group eventually united with the Hutterites in 1537 or 1538.

47 Chronicle, 92–93.

48 Ibid., 93.

49 Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 66.

50 The two other large groups were the Gabrielites, led by Gabriel Ascherham, and the Philipites, led by Philip Plener. While the Hutterites were mostly from the Tyrol, the Philipites were primarily refugees from Swabia, the Palatinate, and the Upper Rhine Valley, while the Gabrielites were from Silesia. For more on these groups, see esp. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 77–132.

51 Chronicle, 99–104.

52 Ibid., 103–4.

53 The Hutterites bemoaned the Anabaptist Kingdom at Münster: “the actions of these corrupt and ungodly people brought intense suffering to the church of God in many places,” ibid., 133.

54 Ibid., 135.

55 Ibid., 142.

56 The Hutterites record the grisly details of Hutter's torture and execution (he was burned alive), calling him a “Christian hero” and the imperial authorities the “wicked sons of Caiphas and Pilate,” ibid., 145.

57 Ibid., 142.

58 The Chronicle portrays Hutter as a martyr akin to the apostles: “Jakob Hutter had led the church for nearly three years and left behind him a people gathered and built up for the Lord. It is from this Jakob Hutter that the church inherited the name Hutterite, or Hutterian Brethren. To this day the church is not ashamed of this name. He stood joyfully for the truth unto death and gave his life for it. This has been the fate of all Christ's apostles,” 146.

59 Other notable Hutterites included the Hutterites first schoolmaster, Jeronimus Käls, and the missionaries Onophrius Griesinger, Leonhard Lochmair, and Georg Fasser, Packull, Hutterite Beginnings, 258.

60 Ibid., 281.

61 Lanzenstiel and Riedemann were co-leaders of the Brethren for fourteen years before Riedemann's death in 1556. Lanzenstiel then led the Brethren as sole Vorsteher until his death in 1565, Chronicle, 216. Cf. Williams, Radical Reformation, 1063–66.

62 Clasen, Anabaptism, 249.

63 Recall the chronicler's claim that the proto-Hutterite group of pacifist Anabaptists from Nikolsburg “appointed servants for temporal affairs” in 1528 to help facilitate the first attempt at full community of goods, Chronicle, 81. The Chronicle also reports that Jakob Hutter was appointed and confirmed “in the service of the Gospel” for the proto-Hutterite group in 1529, 83–84.

64 Clasen, Anabaptism, 250.

65 Martin Rothkegel, “Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia,” in Roth and Stayer, Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 199.

66 Chronicle, 411.

67 Ibid., 493.

68 Stayer, German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 147.

69 Chronicle, 406.

70 The efficiency of the Haushaben “gave the Hutterite communities powerful advantages within local and regional economies. They could undercut local artisans by buying raw materials in large quantities and outstrip local levels of craft production by means of their work ethic, which also eliminated holidays. . . . The Hutterites were also popular with local farmers, who could strike deals with them in grain sales and at rather better prices than they would have secured elsewhere,” Scribner, “Practical Utopias,” 764.

71 The Mennonite Encyclopedia, 2:143.

72 For more detailed information on specifically female occupations, see Harrison, “Role of Women,” 63.

73 While these arrangements often worked out to the benefit of both parties, there were incidents that highlighted the tensions between the commitments of the Brethren and the needs of their noble patrons, which could lead to the expulsion of the Hutterites. For example, the Hutterites refused to help at a wedding banquet on the estate of their overlord Count Franz von Thurn in 1581, and “the housekeeper, who was one of our sisters, refused to go and prepare the hens and geese or have anything to do with it,” Chronicle, 487. The Count then expelled them from his estate. Other times, the off-site Brethren appear to have gotten too close to outsiders, as in the following incident from 1604 illustrates. Concerning the Hutterite craftsmen working at the castle of one of their overlords (Kremsier castle, the seat of Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein), “a large meeting was called at Neumühl attended by all Servants of the Word and stewards from large and small communities. Many brothers of different trades were also there. The concern was raised that some brothers had become too familiar with people holding false beliefs, especially priests. They did not avoid them as they should have done,” ibid., 564–65.

74 Stayer, German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 145.

75 Hostetler, John A., Hutterite Society (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1974), 35Google Scholar. This model was flexible, depending on the proximity of the Haushaben to rural or urban areas. For example, the official web page for Mikulov (Nikolsburg) reports that in 1589 the Anabaptists owned fifty-seven manor houses in the southern part of town, “Habáni v Mikulově,” Town Mikulov, NDC s.r.o., 2001, http://urad.mikulov.cz/_eng/index.php3?Vypis=Habani (accessed March 23, 2004).

76 Marcantonio Varatto remarked in 1567 that the Hutterites “live together in one house as in a monastery,” Henry A. DeWind, “A Sixteenth Century Description of Religious Sects in Austerlitz, Moravia,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 29, no. 1 (January 1955): 46. Cf. Clasen, Anabaptism, 265.

77 The title pages of two of Christoph Andreas Fischer's anti-Hutterite works from the early seventeenth century, Vier und funfftzig erhebliche Vrsachen, warumb die Widertauffer nicht sein im Land zu leyden (Ingolstadt: Andreas Angermeyer, 1607) and Der Hutterischen Widertauffer Taubenkobel, in welchem all ihr Wüst, Mist, Kot und Unflat . . . zu finden, auch des grossen Taubers, des Jakob Hutters Leben (Ingolstadt: Andreas Angermeyer, 1607) use the same title-page woodcut depicting a “filthy” Hutterite pigeon coop.

78 Stayer writes that “Hutterite society was marked by what we may refer to as ‘the leading role of the artisanry,’” German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 150. Stayer bases this assertion on Clasen's statistical research in Anabaptism. See appendix C, “Statistics on the Occupations of Anabaptists,” 432–36.

79 See ME 2:454–55 for a chronological list of all Hutterian Ordnungen.

80 Chronicle, 406.

81 Hostetler, Hutterite Society, 39.

82 These small rooms were “rather like monastic cells,” Scribner, “Practical Utopias,” 762.

83 Clasen, Anabaptism, 262.

84 Scribner, “Practical Utopias,” 762. See also Hostetler, Hutterite Society, 53–54.

85 Opponents of the Hutterites accused them of separating children from their parents so early that it gave rise to instances of incest because siblings did not know each other, Clasen, Anabaptism, 267.

86 Ibid., 270.

87 Ibid., 207.

88 Two Hutterite men, Joseph Hauser and Darius Heyn, explained the Hutterite custom to a group of Mennonites in Prussia as follows: “if a bachelor or widower among them wished to marry, he could not just pick whom he wanted but must turn to the elders. They would go to the sisters and ask among the widows and unmarried women if any wished to get married. They did not mention names or put pressure on the sisters, who they felt should rather remain unmarried. If a sister responded and was suggested to the brother and if he accepted gladly, the two would be married, but there was no compulsion. There was no courting among them; but if this should ever happen, the elders would decide, according to the situation, whether the two involved might be married,” Chronicle, 561–62n2.

89 Epp and Roberts, “Women in the Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren,” 210.

90 Stayer, German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 149.

91 As Stayer relates, “the belief that those in authority should receive special treatment was well established in sixteenth-century common sense. It was reflected in the practice of most monasteries and in Thomas More's description of conditions in Utopia,” German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 147; cf. von Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession Und Tradition, 251; Clasen, Anabaptism, 252–55.

92 On the famous Hutterite barber-surgeons, see esp. John L. Sommer, “Hutterite Medicine and Physicians in Moravia in the Sixteenth Century and After,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 27, no. 2 (April 1953): 111–27, and Robert Friedmann, “Hutterite Physicians and Barber-Surgeons (Additional Notes),” Mennonite Quarterly Review 27, no. 2 (April 1953): 128–36. So renowned was the Hutterite barber-surgeon Georg Zobel that Emperor Rudolf II summoned him to Prague in 1581 to treat a serious illness, perhaps a bout of melancholy. Zobel attended to the Emperor for six months before going back to Moravia, Chronicle, 487–88.

93 The status of most early modern wives was determined by that of their husbands, a reality that women negotiated to their advantage when they could. See the example of Margerethe Prüss of Strasbourg, who managed to stay in the print business of her father by marrying three printers. According to Cheryl Nafziger-Leis, the “key to Margerethe's story was her decision to marry printers that enabled her to continue in this line of work and to retain some measure of control over the Prüss family printing business. She utilized the best means available to her as a woman of her time,” “Margerethe Prüss of Strasbourg,” Snyder and Huebert Hecht, Profiles of Anabaptist Women, 270.

94 Chronicle, 323–24; 326–29; 348–52. Michael Veldthaler nearly froze to death on his first mission trip to Bavaria, and on his second trip Count Wolf von Öttingen threw him into a deep dungeon. Veldthaler later became Servant of the Word on the Nikolsburg Haushaben, and he was particularly hated by the Catholic priests on the Nikolsburg estate until his death in 1587. For more on Veldthaler, see esp. von Schlachta, Hutterische Konfession Und Tradition, 86–88; and ME 4:804.

95 Clasen, Anabaptism, 262.

96 The Hutterite Vorsteher Andreas Ehrenpreis (r. 1639–1662) finally took measures against special treatment for the wives of preachers and barber-surgeons, Harrison, “Role of Women,” 64–66. Although it comes from a later period of Hutterite history, Ehrenpreis's ordinance (the Auszug) is evidence that there were practices to be legislated against. It appears that these elite Hutterite wives had become used to special treatment and were none too pleased with the “reformist” legislation of Ehrenpreis. Harrison notes that the wives of preachers demanded better apartments, travelled with their husbands outside the Haushaben, and were given special tables for the celebration of communion.

97 Chronicle, 104.

98 Riedemann, Peter, Peter Riedemann's Hutterite Confession of Faith: Translation of the 1565 German Edition of Confession of our Religion, Teaching, and Faith, by the Brothers Who are Known as the Hutterites (hereafter, Account), trans. and ed. Friesen, John (Waterloo, Ont.: Herald, 1998), 154–55Google Scholar.

99 Riedemann, Account, 155–56.

100 Chronicle, 198.

101 Ibid., 199.

102 Ibid.

103 1 Tim. 5:18, which draws on Deut. 25:4: “For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, the labourer is worthy of his reward.”

104 Chronicle, 199.

105 Stayer, German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 151. On Hutterite missions, see esp. von Schlachta, “‘Searching through the Nations’: Tasks and Problems of Sixteenth-Century Hutterian Mission,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74, no. 1 (January 2000), 27–49.

106 Clasen confirms that “many missionaries were Hutterite leaders. Between 1530 and 1618, 33 servants of the Word and five servants of temporal needs were sent on missionary trips,” Anabaptism, 215. During that same period, Clasen identifies 148 common Hutterites who were sent out as missionaries and 43 unnamed Brethren whose social status is unknown, ibid., 470.

107 Stayer, German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 150–51.

108 Clasen, Anabaptism, 214–15. Wes Harrison adds that “missioners were among the most respected of the brethren, especially in the golden years,” Andreas Ehrenpreis and Hutterite Faith and Practice, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 36 (Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora, 1997), 54.

109 Clasen, Anabaptism, 217.

110 Ibid.

111 Ibid., 215.

112 Ibid.

113 Ibid., 216.

114 Chronicle, 186.

115 Ibid., 187.

116 Epp and Roberts, “Women in the Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren,” 208.

117 Ibid., 218.

118 Gründliche kurtz verfaste Historia von Münsterischen Widertauffern: und wie die Hutterischen Brüder so auch billich Widertauffer genent werden (hereafter Basic, Short History) (Munich: Adam Berg, 1588, 1589). Erhard's tenure in Mikulov was marked by conflicts with the Hutterites, who were shielded from Erhard's efforts at bringing the estate back to the Roman Church by the Catholic overlord Adam von Dietrichstein, primarily because they were obedient vassals and made money for the estate through rents and taxation.

119 Von Der Widertauffer Verfluchten Ursprung, gottlosen Lehre, und derselben gründliche Widerlegung (Bruck an der Theya: 1603). Fischer worked from 1601 to 1615 as the parish priest of Valtice in Lower Austria, about ten miles from Mikulov. Like Erhard, he worked for a Catholic lord, Karl von Liechtenstein, who nonetheless allowed the Hutterites to live and work on his Moravian estates for economic reasons.

120 Fischer, , Vier und funffßig Erhebliche Ursachen Warumb die Widertauffer nicht sein im Land zu leyden (hereafter Fifty-Four Reasons) (Ingolstadt: Andreas Angermeyer, 1607)Google Scholar; Fischer, , Der Hutterischen Widertauffer Taubenkobel: In Welchem all Ihr Wüst, Mist, Kott Vnnd Vnflat (Ingolstadt: Andreas Angermeyer, 1607)Google Scholar.

121 Taffeta was (and remains) a high-end woven fabric used in women's clothing (esp. bridal gowns) and bedding.

122 Basic, Short History, 18; “der schönsten Doppeldaffetene von Pomerantzen und andern Farben/Röck und Seidene Schälckl.”

123 Cited in DeWind, “A Sixteenth Century Description of Religious Sects in Austerlitz, Moravia,” 44–53, 46.

124 Fischer drew upon Erhard's Basic, Short History in his own attacks upon the Hutterites, including his account of the hypocrisy of Hutterite dress. Nevertheless, he only cites Erhard once as a source in his entire corpus, Fifty-Four Reasons, 94.

125 For a detailed definition of sammet, which was a dense soft fabric akin to velvet, see Frick, Carole Collier, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortune, and Fine Clothing (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 316–17Google Scholar.

126 Clasen identifies the Haushalter as the Servant of Temporal Affairs, who oversaw the daily administration of the Haushaben, Clasen, Anabaptism, 260.

127 Fischer, Fifty-Four Reasons, 91–92; “Sie haben bißhie her de Welt so Hoch gescholten/daß sie Sammet unnd seyden trage / tragen doch die Hutterischen Widertaufferischen Weiber die schönsten doppeltaffete von Pomerantzen und andern farben Röcke unnd seiden Wämmeser als wann sie vom Adel oder gar freyin wären / welche doch nur etwann Baders / Kelners / Haußhalters und Dieners Weiber seyn.”

128 Johann Eysvogel, A New Song about the Hutterite Anabaptists' Sect, Teaching, Life, and Residence, as presently practiced in the Land of Moravia [Ein New Lied / von der Hůterischen Widertöufferen Secte / Lehr / Leben / Wohnung / Im Land zu Maehrheim jetz und gebreüchlich] (Cologne, 1583); Cf. Clasen, Anabaptism, 252–75.

129 Oyer, John S., “Two Anabaptist Hymns,” in “They Harry the Good People Out of the Land”: Essays on the Persecution, Survival and Flourishing of Anabaptists and Mennonites,” ed. Roth, John D. (Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society, 2000), 27Google Scholar.

130 Ibid., 29.

131 Of course, not all of Jedelshauser's twelve reasons relay the needle maker's genuine grievances with the Hutterites. Some of his more extreme claims, such as the claim that Jakob Hutter was executed for adultery in his seventh reason, are probably due to the influence of Christoph Erhard. On Erhard's use of Jedelshauser's recantation for his own polemical purposes, see my “An Anabaptist's Tale: Christoph Erhard and the Recantation of the Ex-Hutterite Hans Jedelshauser,” in Grenzen des Täufertums / Boundaries of Anabaptism, ed. Anselm Schubert, Astrid von Schlachta, and Michael Driedger. Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 209 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, July 2009): 126–44.

132 Jedelshauser, Zwelff wichtige und starcke Ursachen Hansen Jedelshausers von Ulm: seines Handtwercks ein Nadler, u. warumb er mit seinem ehelichen Weib unnd vier Kindern, von den Widertauffern, so man Hutterische Brüder nen[n]t, sey abgetretten, dieselben verlasse[n], sich aber zu der Catholische[n] Römischen Kirchen bekehrt habe (hereafter, Twelve Reasons) (Ingolstadt: Wolfgang Eder, 1587).

133 The weinzerl was in charge of agriculture; another assistant to the Servant of Temporal Affairs was the kellner, who was in charge of the community's cash for outside expenses, Clasen, Anabaptism, 259–60.

134 Jedelshauser, Twelve Reasons, 5; “hab nun ich nun müssen anhoren / bin also in meinem Gewissen gestanden / daß diß kein außerwähltes frommes Volck Gottes sey / weil sie so hitzig miteinander zancken.”

135 Ibid., 6; “wie es offentlich jederman bekandt / daß sie die arme Gemeyn bald / aber die Obristen langsam / wenig oder nichts straffen.”

136 Stayer, German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 147.

137 “But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also a supply for your want: that there may be equality.”

138 Jedelshauser, Twelve Reasons, 10; “die Obristen / Diener / Haußhalter / Bader / Kelner un ihre Weiber / ihr Ordinari mit täglichen zweyen essen so uberflüssig / von Fleisch gesotten unnd bratten / von Wildbrät / Fisch und Wein haben / da doch solches die Gemeyn nit hat / und mit Gersten / Ruben und Kraut / darzu mit dem saure Bier.”

139 Ibid. “deß schmeychelns unnd streichens kein End.”

140 Ibid. “Federbetthen” versus “Rhorkolben.”

141 Ibid., 11; “Wie wann eines Dieners / Baders / Haußhalters Weib in den sechs wochen ligt / zugleich ein solcher Underschyed gehälte wirdt?”/ zugleich ein solcher Underschyed gehälte wirdt?”

142 Clasen, Anabaptism, 253.

143 Jedelshauser, Twelve Reasons, 11; “die Gemeyn ein gute dicken grobe Loden / oder Tuch / alles auff das schlechtist.”

144 Stayer concludes that Jedelshauser's tract “breathes a disillusioned idealism, which is a good deal more credible than the learned anti-Hutterite polemics of Catholic clerics,” German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, 147.

145 “A Treatise not against that Apostolic Community … but against the ‘Communists’ in Moravia,” Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 11, no. 3 (London: Lindsey, 1957), 90–104; on the provenance of this tract, see Stanislaw Kot, “Polish Brethren and the Problem of Communism in the XVIth Century,” Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society 11, no. 2 (London: Lindsey, 1956), 38–53; cf. Harrison, Andreas Ehrenpreis and Hutterite Faith and Practice, 205–8.