An energetic protest by the Canons induced the Bishop to inhibit Rothmann from preaching in St. Maurice. He continued his addresses in the churchyard of St. Lambert (Feb. 18th, 1532), and a few days later he was placed in possession of the church itself. St. Lambert"s had been built by the munic.i.p.ality, and was the property of the town. Rothmann was appointed by the Town Council Evangelical preacher to the town, and was given one of the town"s "gild" houses for a parsonage.
Two months later the Bishop resigned, and was succeeded by Duke Erich of Brunswick-Grubenhagen, already Bishop of Osnabruck and Paderborn. The new Bishop determined to get rid of Rothmann. He made representations to Hesse and Electoral Saxony and other Evangelical Powers, and persuaded them to induce the more moderate of the reforming party in Munster to abandon Rothmann; and, this done, the preacher was ordered to leave the city. The "gilds" of artisans refused to let their preacher depart, and, under the leadership of Knipperdolling,[624] drafted a letter to the authorities declaring their determination to retain him at all hazards. The democracy of Munster and the religious movement for the first time openly combined against the authorities of the city.
While things were at this pa.s.s, the Bishop died (May 13th, 1532). The Chapter elected (June 1st) Count Franz von Waldeck, already in possession of Minden, and made Bishop of Osnabruck a few days later (June 11th)--a pluralist of the first rank. The reforming party in Munster expected the worst from their new ruler. A full a.s.sembly of the "gilds" of the town was held, and by an overwhelming majority the members pledged themselves to defend their pastor and his Gospel with body and goods while life lasted. A committee of thirty-six burghers was elected to watch the course of events and to take counsel with the civic rulers and the presidents of the "gilds." Rothmann published _theses_ explaining his teaching, and challenging objectors to a public disputation. Public meetings were held; the Town Council was formally requested to hand over all the parochial churches to Evangelical preachers; which was done--the Cathedral alone remaining for Roman Catholic worship.
These proceedings produced unavailing remonstrances from the Bishop. The n.o.bles in the neighbourhood tried to interfere, but to no purpose. In October (1532) the Bishop"s party within the town began to take action.
They attempted to sequester the goods of the more prominent disaffected citizens; chains were placed across the princ.i.p.al streets to prevent communication between the different quarters; an attempt was made to isolate the town itself. These things meant war. The "gilds," always a military organisation in mediaeval cities, armed. A party of knights sent to invade the town retired before the armed citizens. While the Bishop sought to strengthen himself by alliances and to beguile the townsmen by negotiation, a thousand armed burghers marched by night to the little township of Telgte, where a large number of the ecclesiastical and secular n.o.bles were encamped, surrounded it, captured the Bishop"s partisans, and returned to hold them as hostages. This act afforded the occasion for the intervention of Philip of Hesse. An arrangement was come to by which Munster was declared to be an Evangelical city and enrolled within the Schmalkald League. The history of Munster up to this time (Feb. 14th, 1533) did not differ from that of many towns which had adopted the Reformation. Rothmann had been the leader in Munster, like Brenz in Hall, Alber in Reutlingen, or Lachmann at Heilbron.
It is usually a.s.sumed that up to this time Rothmann was a Lutheran in his teaching, that he had won Munster for the great Lutheran party, and that his future aberrations from the Evangelical theology were due to his weakness before the Anabaptist mob who later invaded the city. This seems to be a mere a.s.sumption. He had certainly taught justification by faith; but that did not make him a Lutheran. The dividing line between the various cla.s.ses of objectors to the Roman Catholic theology in the sixteenth century was drawn at the meaning of the Sacraments, and especially of the Lord"s Supper. There is absolutely no evidence to show that Rothmann was ever a follower of Luther in his theory of the Holy Supper. He had visited Luther and Melanchthon during his year of absence from Munster, but they had never been quite sure of him. He has confessed that it was at Stra.s.sburg and not at Wittenberg that he got most help for his future work and received it from Capito, who was no Lutheran, and from Schwenkfeld, who was an Anabaptist Mystic. It was Stra.s.sburg and not Wittenberg that he called "the crown of all Christian cities and Churches!" In his confession of faith he says that the Ma.s.s is no sacrifice, but only a sign of the true Sacrifice; and that the Ma.s.s and the Lord"s Supper have _no other meaning_ than to remind us of the death of Christ, and to awaken in our hearts a certainty of the freely given grace of G.o.d. That is not Lutheran doctrine, it is not even Zwinglian; it is much nearer the Anabaptist. It is also pretty clear that he held the doctrine of the "inner light" in the sense of many Anabaptists. It may be safely said that if Rothmann was not an Anabaptist from the beginning, his was a mind prepared to accept their doctrines almost as soon as they were clearly presented to him. Heinrich Roll, a fugitive from Julich who sought refuge in Munster, convinced Rothmann of the unlawfulness of infant baptism. No sooner had this conviction laid hold on him than he refused to baptize infants--for Rothmann was always straightforward. His views annoyed a large number of the leading citizens, prominent among whom was Van der Wieck, the syndic of the town. These men, all Lutherans, besieged their pastor with remonstrances, and finally brought him before the Town Council. The matter came to a head on Sept. 7th (1533), when Staprade, the a.s.sistant preacher at St. Lambert"s, refused to baptize the children of two Lutheran members of the Town Council who had been brought to the church for the purpose. When the preachers were brought before the Council, they were informed that such things would not be allowed. Staprade, the chief offender and a non-burgher, was banished, and Rothmann with the other clergy who agreed with him were threatened with the same fate if they persisted in declining to baptize infants. They refused to obey the Council; they were promptly deposed, and their churches were closed against them. But the ma.s.s of the citizens were attached to Rothmann, and their att.i.tude became too threatening for the Magistrates to maintain their uncompromising position. Rothmann was permitted to remain, and was allowed to preach in the Church of St. Servatius. The Lutheran Magistrates brought preachers into the town to occupy the other places of worship.
The Magistrates, Van der Wieck being the leading spirit among them, resolved to hold a public disputation on the subject of Baptism. They had brought to Munster the famous Humanist, Hermann von dem Busche, now a professor in Marburg and a distinguished defender of the Lutheran Reformation, and they counted on his known learning and eloquence to convince their fellow-citizens that the views of Rothmann were unscriptural. The conference was to be perfectly free. Roman Catholic theologians were invited, and took part. Rothmann appeared to defend his position. The invitations had been signed not only by the Magistrates, but by the heads of the "gilds" of the town.[625] Van der Wieck confessed that the result of the disputation was not what he expected.
So far as the great ma.s.s of the people were concerned, Rothmann appeared to have the best of the argument, and he stood higher than ever in the estimation of the citizens. Rothmann, whose whole career shows that opposition made him more and more advanced, now began to dwell upon the wrongs of the commonalty and the duty of the rich to do much more for their poorer brethren than they did. He taught by precept as well as example. He lived an openly ascetic life, that he might abound in charity. His sermons and his life had an extraordinary effect on the rich as well as on the poor. Creditors forgave debtors, men placed sums of money in the hands of Rothmann for distribution. There was no enforced communism, but the example of primitive Church in Jerusalem was followed as far as possible. Among these thoroughgoing followers of Rothmann, a wealthy lady, the mother-in-law of Bernardin Knipperdolling, was conspicuous.
The Magistrates became seriously alarmed at the condition of things.
They knew that so long as they remained a Lutheran munic.i.p.ality, even nominally, the great Lutheran Princes, like Philip of Hesse and the Elector of Saxony, would protect them against their Romanist Bishop; but Lutherans and Romanists alike disliked and distrusted Anabaptists, and the imperial edict would surely be enforced against them sooner or later. Rothmann"s preaching, which they could not control, and the power he exercised through the "gilds," made it impossible for them to maintain that Munster was a member of the confederacy of Lutheran cities. On the other hand, the news that Munster had practically become Anabaptist, spread far and wide among these persecuted people, who began to think that it was destined to be a conspicuous city of refuge, perhaps the Zion or New Jerusalem whose establishment Melchior Hoffman had predicted. They gathered from all parts to place themselves under the protection of its walls. The great majority naturally came from the Netherlands, where the persecution was hottest. The refugees were almost all _Melchiorites_--men who looked for a speedy termination of their sufferings in the establishment of the kingdom of G.o.d upon the earth; and the majority of them were Dutch _Melchiorites_, men to whom freedom was a tradition, ready to fight for it, disciples of Jan Matthys, who had taught them to abandon the doctrine of pa.s.sive resistance so universally held by all sections of the earlier Anabaptists.[626]
Rothmann had long been acquainted with the books and tracts of Hoffman, and had great sympathy with them. He as well as the Magistrates foresaw trouble for himself and for the city. He went the length of advising friends who did not share his opinions to leave the town; for himself, his manifest duty appeared to be to risk all on behalf of the poor people whom G.o.d had given into his hand.
The last months of 1532 saw Rothmann and the Lutheran Town Council facing each other with growing mutual suspicion. On Dec. 8th, a journeyman smith, Johann Schroder, began preaching Anabaptist doctrines in the churchyard of St. Lambert"s, and challenged the Lutheran pastor, Fabricius, to a disputation. This was more than the Town Council could endure. They prohibited Rothmann preaching, and declared that they withdrew their protection--a sentence of virtual outlawry (Dec. 11th).
He calmly told the messenger of the Council that he depended on the help of higher powers than his masters, and preached publicly in the Church of St. Servatius. Schroder had begun to preach again, and was apprehended. The "gild" of the smiths rose, and, headed by their officials, forced the Council to release their comrade. The Anabaptists and Rothmann had won a notable triumph, which was soon widely known.
Banished Anabaptist pastors returned to the town.
Events marched quickly thereafter. Bartholomaeus Boekbinder and Willem de Kuiper, sent by Jan Matthys, appeared in Munster (Jan. 5th, 1533). We can infer what their message was from what followed. Rothmann denounced the Council and its Lutheran preachers. Riots were the consequence, many of the rioters being women, among whom the nuns of the uberwa.s.ser convent were conspicuous. It was declared that all believers ought to be rebaptized, and that a list of the faithful ought to be made. The doc.u.ment contained fourteen hundred names within eight days. The ma.s.s of the people enthusiastically believed in the near approach of the Day of the Lord.
Soon afterwards (Jan. 13th, 1533), Jan Bockelson (John of Leyden) entered the town. He was the favourite disciple and _alter ego_ of Jan Matthys. He brought with him the famous Twenty-one Articles, and called upon the faithful to unite themselves into a compact organisation pledged to carry them out. He was received with enthusiasm.
The Council, feeling their helplessness, appealed to the Bishop, who contented himself with ordering them to execute the imperial mandate against Anabaptists. He was as much incensed against the Lutherans as against the Anabaptists, and hoped that the two parties would destroy themselves. Within the town, Anabaptists fought with the combined Evangelicals and Romanists, and on two occasions the tumults were succeeded by truces which guaranteed full liberty of worship to all persons (Jan. 28th and Feb. 9th). Then the Council abandoned the struggle. The princ.i.p.al Burgomaster, Tylbeck, was baptized, and Van der Wieck, with many of the princ.i.p.al citizens, left the town. Van der Wieck fell into the hands of the Bishop, who slaughtered him barbarously.
A new Council, entirely Anabaptist, was elected, with Bernardin Knipperdolling and Gerhard Kibbenbroick, a leading merchant, as Burgomasters (Feb. 28th). The complete rule of the Anabaptists had begun. This date also marks the beginning of the investment of the city by the Bishop"s troops. It should never be forgotten, as it frequently is, that during the _whole_ period of Anabaptist domination in Munster the town was undergoing the perils of a siege, and that military considerations _had_ to be largely kept in mind. Nor should it be forgotten that during its existence the Bishop"s troops were murdering in cold blood every Anabaptist they could lay their hands on.
Jan Matthys himself had come to Munster some time in February, urged thereto by a letter from Bockelson, and the citizens had become accustomed to see the long lean figure of the prophet, with his piercing eyes and flowing black beard, pa.s.s to and fro in their streets. They had learned to hang breathless on his words as his sonorous voice repeated the message which the Lord had given him to utter, or described the visions which had been vouchsafed to him. When an Anabaptist Council ruled the city they were but the mouthpiece of the prophet. His reign was brief, but while it lasted he issued command after command.
Separation from the world was one of the ideas he dwelt upon in his addresses; and to him this meant that no unbelievers, no unbaptized, could remain within the walls of an Anabaptist city. The command went forth that all adults must be baptized or leave the town. It is scarcely to be wondered that, with the great likelihood of falling into the hands of the Bishop"s soldiers as soon as they got beyond the walls, the great majority of those who had not yet received the seal of the new communion submitted to the ceremony. They were marched to the market-place, where they found "three or more" Anabaptist preachers, each with a great vessel full of water before them. The neophytes knelt down, received the usual admonition, and a dish of water was thrice emptied on their heads in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. This done, they went to the Burgomaster"s house and had their names entered on the roll.[627]
It was also by Matthys" orders that what is called the communism of Munster was begun. The duty of systematic and brotherly charity had from the first been an outstanding one among the Anabaptists. Like all other principles which find immediate outcome in action, this one of brotherly love had found many ways of taking actual shape. In a few of the smaller sections of the brethren it had appeared in the form of communism so far as food and raiment went. In some of the communities in Moravia the Brethren subscribed to a common fund out of which common meals were provided; and these payments were compulsory. We have seen how Rothmann"s sermons had produced an extraordinary outburst of benevolence in Munster before the coming of the prophets. It does not appear that Matthys" commands went further than the exhortations of Rothmann.
Munster was a beleaguered city. When the siege began it contained about seventeen hundred men, between five and six thousand women, besides thousands of children. The largest proportion of these were refugees. It is evident that numbers could not support themselves, but were absolutely dependent upon the charity of their neighbours. The preachers invited the faithful to give up their money, and what provisions they could spare to feed the poverty striken. Large numbers thus appealed to brought all their portable property; others gave part; some refused, and were denounced publicly. The provisions stored in the monasteries or in private houses abandoned by their proprietors--were taken for the common good. When the siege had lasted long, and the enemy were deliberately starving the inhabitants into surrender, the communism in food became stricter, as is the case in any beleaguered fortress. No attempt was ever made to inst.i.tute a thoroughgoing communism. What existed at first was simply an abundant Christian charity enforced by public opinion,[628] and latterly a requisitioning of everything that could be used to support the whole population of a besieged city.
Jan Matthys did not long survive his coming to Munster. On the evening of the 4th of April, as he sat at supper in a friend"s house, he was observed to spend long minutes in brooding. At last, sighing heavily, he was heard to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, "Loved Father, not my will but Thine be done."
He rose quietly from his seat, shook hands with all his companions, solemnly kissed each one; then left the house in silence, accompanied by his wife. Next day with about twenty companions he went out by one of the gates of the city, fell fiercely on the enemy, was overpowered by numbers, and received his death-stroke. A religious enthusiast and a singularly straightforward and courageous man!
His death depressed the defenders of Munster greatly; but they were rallied by the persuasive eloquence of Jan Bockelson, the favourite disciple of the dead prophet. It was under the leadership of Bockelson--Jan of Leyden he was called--that the Town Council of Munster was abolished; that twelve elders were chosen to rule the people; that Jan himself became king, and had his Court; that the old miracle plays were revived, etc. The only one of the many actions of this highly talented and eloquent young Dutchman which need concern us was the inst.i.tution of polygamy, for which he seems to have been almost solely responsible.
Polygamy is the one dark stain on the Anabaptists of Munster, and one that is ineffaceable. Not unnaturally, yet quite unjustly, the fact of its inst.i.tution has been used continually to blacken the character of the whole movement. It was an episode, a lamentable one, in the history of Anabaptism in Munster; it had nothing to do with the brethren outside the town. The whole question presents difficulties which, with our present information, cannot be removed. That men whose whole past lives had been examples of the most correct moral behaviour, and who had been influenced by deep and earnest religious feelings, should suddenly (for it was sudden) have given the lie to their own previous teaching and to the tenets of every separate section of Anabaptism, that they should have sullied the last few months of an heroic and desperate defence within a doomed city by the inst.i.tution of polygamy, is an insoluble puzzle.[629]
We are not now dependent for our knowledge of the Anabaptist movement on the writings of embittered opponents, or upon such tainted sources as confessions of martyrs wrung from them under torture. The diligence of archaeologists has exhumed a long list of writings of the leaders in the rising. They give us trustworthy accounts of the opinions and teachings of almost every sect cla.s.sed under the common name. We know what they thought about all the more important matters which were in controversy during the sixteenth century--what they taught about Free Will, Original Sin, Justification, the Trinity, the Person of Christ, and so on. We have clear glimpses of the kind of lives they led--a genuinely pious, self-denying, Christian walk and conversation. Their teaching was often at variance with the Romanist and the Lutheran doctrinal confessions; but they never varied from the moral life which all Christians are called upon to live. Their writings seldom refer to marriage; but when they do it is always to bear witness to the universal and deeply rooted Christian sentiment that marriage is a sacred and unbreakable union of one man with one woman. Nay more, one doc.u.ment has descended to us which bears testimony to the teaching of the Anabaptists within the beleaguered city only a few weeks before the proclamation of polygamy.
It is ent.i.tled _Bekentones des globens und lebens der gemein Criste zu Monster_,[630] and was meant to be an answer to calumnies circulated by their enemies. It contains a paragraph on Marriage which is a clear and distinct a.s.sertion that the only Christian marriage is the unbreakable union of one man with one woman.[631]
It is true that the Anabaptist thought of "separation," when carried out in its most extreme way and to its utmost logical consequences, struck a blow at the sanct.i.ty of the marriage tie. All taught that the "believer," _i.e._ he or she who had been rebaptized, ought to keep themselves separate from the "world," _i.e._ those who had not submitted to rebaptism; and in the more extreme sects it was alleged that this meant that spouses ought not to cohabit with "unbelieving" partners.
This was held and practised among the _Melchiorites_, and was stated in its extremest form in the Twenty-one Rules sent to Munster by Jan Matthys by the hand of Bockelson. They contained two prescriptions--one for the unmarried, which exhorted them only to marry in the Lord; another for the married, which implies that marriage contracted between husband and wife before rebaptism ought to be repeated. This meant that marriages contracted by persons yet "in the world" were not valid, and, of course, destroyed the sanct.i.ty of all marriages outside the circle of the brethren. But when a _Melchiorite_ at Stra.s.sburg, Klaus Frey, whose wife was not an Anabaptist, carried out the principle to its logical consequences and married an Anabaptist woman, his "unbelieving" wife being alive, he was promptly excommunicated.
When the information to be gathered from the various sources is combined, what took place in Munster seems to have been as follows.
Sometime in July (1534), John Bockelson summoned the preachers, Rothmann at their head, and the twelve elders to meet him in the _Rathaus_. There he propounded to them his proposal to inaugurate polygamy, and argued the matter with them for eight successive days. We are told that Rothmann and the preachers opposed the scheme in a determined manner.
The arguments used by the prophet--arguments of the flimsiest nature--have also been recorded. He dwelt on the necessity of accepting certain biblical expressions in their most literal sense, and in giving them their widest application. He insisted especially on the command of G.o.d, _Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth_; he brought forward the example of the patriarchs and other examples of polygamy from the Old Testament; he went the length of saying that when St. Paul insisted that bishops must be husbands of one wife, the phrase implied that all who were not bishops were free to take more than one; he dwelt on the special conditions existing among the population within the town,--the number of male refugees, either unmarried or who had left their wives behind them in the places from which they had fled; the disproportionate number of women (more than three women for every man),--and the difficulties thereby created to prevent them from obeying the command of G.o.d to be fruitful and increase; and he urged that in their present condition the command of G.o.d could only be obeyed by means of polygamy.
In the end he brought preachers and elders round to his opinion; and in spite of opportunities given them for revolt, they remained steadfast to it. They preached upon its advantages for three days to the people in the Cathedral square; and it was Rothmann who proclaimed the decree commanding polygamy to the people. How were the preachers persuaded to forego their opposition? What one of the threadbare arguments used by the prophet convinced them? Had he proclaimed polygamy as a divine command received by him as a prophet, we might imagine the preachers and people, such was the exalted state of their minds, receiving it with reverence; but the prophet did not announce that he had received any such message. He relied solely upon his arguments. They did not convince all the people. The proclamation of polygamy awoke violent protests upon the part of the native townsmen, who, headed by a "master-smith" named Mollenbecke, felt that they would rather hand over the city to the Bishop"s forces than live in a polygamist society, and the revolt was almost successful; but the preachers stood firm in their support of the prophet and of his polygamy; and it was the women who were mainly instrumental in causing the revolt to be a failure.
If we are to judge by the use made of it in Rothmann"s _Rest.i.tution_,[632] which defends the introduction of the new marriage laws, the preachers seem to have been most impressed by the argument which dwelt on the condition of the city--the large proportion of men whose wives were in the towns they had abandoned to take refuge in Munster, and the great mult.i.tude of women. It is just possible that it was this economic argument that affected both them and the prophet himself. This is the view taken by such writers as Kautsky, Belfort Bax, and Heath. The explanation is confirmed by the fact that the decree was more than a proclamation of polygamy. It provided that _all_ marriageable men must take wives, and that _all_ women must be under the care of a husband. The laws against s.e.xual irregularity were as strong during the reign of polygamy as before its introduction. But there is this to be said against it, that the town of Munster, notwithstanding its abnormal conditions, was singularly pure in life, and that polygamy, so far from improving the moral condition, made it distinctly worse.
Detmer, whose opinions are always worthy of respect, believes than Jan of Leyden had fallen violently in love with the young, beautiful, and intellectual Divara, the widow of Jan Matthys, and that, as he could not marry her apart from polygamy, he persuaded his preachers and elders to consent to his proposals. His wonderful magnetic influence overbore their better judgment.
What is evident is that the decree of polygamy was suddenly conceived and forced upon the people. If Jan of Leyden[633] took no share in its proclamation, he set the people an example of obedience. He promptly married Divara as soon as it was lawful to do so. He used the ordinance to strengthen his position. His other wives--he had sixteen in all--were the daughters or near relations of the leaders in Munster. There is evidence to show that his own character deteriorated rapidly under the new conditions of life.
The siege of Munster went on during all these months. The Bishop"s soldiers attempted several a.s.saults, and were always beaten back. They seem latterly to have relied on the power of hunger. The sufferings of the citizens during the later weeks were terrible. At length Heinrich Gresbeck, deserting to the besiegers" camp, offered to betray the city to its enemies. He showed them, by plans and models in clay, how to get through the defences, and himself prepared the way for the Bishop"s soldiers to enter. The Anabaptists gathered for one last desperate defence in the market-place, under the leadership of Bernardin Knipperdolling and Bernard Krechting, with Rothmann by their side. When the band was reduced to three hundred men, they capitulated on promise of safe-conduct to leave the town. It is needless to say that the bargain was not kept. Rothmann was believed to have perished in the market-place. The city was given over to pillage, and the streets were soon strewn with dead bodies. Then a court was established to try the Anabaptist prisoners. The first woman to suffer was the fair young Divara. She steadfastly refused to abjure, and met her fate in her own queenly way. No man who had been in any way prominent during the siege was allowed to escape death. Jan Bockelson, Bernardin Knipperdolling, and Bernard Krechting were reserved to suffer the most terrible tortures that the diabolical ingenuity of mediaeval executioners could devise. It was long believed that Rothmann had escaped, and that he had got away to Rostock or to Lubeck; more than one person was arrested on the suspicion of being the famous preacher of Munster--"a short, dark man, with straight brown hair," was his description in the Lubeck handbills.
The horrible fate of Munster did not destroy the indomitable Anabaptists. Menno Simons (b. 1496 or 1505 at Witmarsum, a village near Franecker), "a man of integrity, mild, accommodating, patient of injuries, and so ardent in his piety as to exemplify in his own life the precepts he gave to others," spent twenty-five laborious years in visiting the scattered Anabaptist communities and uniting them in a simple brotherly a.s.sociation. He purged their minds of the apocalyptic fancies taught by many of their later leaders under the influence of persecution, inculcated the old ideas of non-resistance, of the evils of State control over the Church, of the need of personal conversion, and of adult baptism as its sign and seal. From his labours have come all the modern Baptist Churches.
CHAPTER III.
SOCINIANISM.[634]
The fathers of the Socinian Church were the two Sozzini, uncle and nephew, Lelio and Fausto, both natives of the town of Siena.
The uncle, Lelio Sozzini (b. 1525), was by profession a lawyer. He was a man of irreproachable moral life, a Humanist by training, a student of the cla.s.sics and also of theology. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with the condition of the Romish Church, and early began to entertain grave doubts about some of its leading doctrinal positions. He communicated his views to a select circle of friends. Notwithstanding the precautions he had taken, he became suspected. Cardinal Caraffa had persuaded Pope Paul III. to consent to the reorganisation of the Inquisition in 1542, and Italy soon became a very unsafe place for any suspected person.
Lelio left Siena in 1547, and spent the remaining portion of his life in travelling in those lands which had accepted the Lutheran or the Reformed faith. He made the acquaintance of all the leading Protestant theologians, including Melanchthon and Calvin. He kept up an extensive correspondence with them, representing his own personal theological opinions in the form of questions which he desired to have solved for him. From Calvin"s letters we can learn that the great theologian had grave doubts about the moral earnestness of his Italian correspondent, and repeatedly warned him that he was losing hold on the saving facts of heart religion.
All the while Sozzini seems to have made up his mind already on all the topics introduced into his correspondence, and to have been communicating his views, on pledge of secrecy, to the small communities of Italian refugees who were settled in Switzerland. He can scarcely be blamed for this secretiveness; toleration, as the sad example of the burning of Servede had shown, was not recognised to be a Christian principle among the Churches of the Reformation. Lelio died at Zurich in 1562 without having published his opinions, and without his neighbours and hosts being aware of his real theological position.
He bequeathed all his property, including his books and his ma.n.u.scripts, to his nephew, Fausto, who had remained at Siena. This nephew was the founder of the Socinian Church.
Fausto Sozzini (b. 1539) was, like his uncle, a man of irreproachable life, a lawyer, a diligent and earnest student, fond of theology, and of great force of character. How early he had come to think as his uncle had done, is unknown. Report affirms that after he had received his uncle"s books and papers, and had given sufficient time to their study, he left Italy, visited the places where Lelio had gathered small companies of secret sympathisers, to confirm them in the faith. His uncle had visited Poland twice, and Fausto went there in 1579. He found that the anti-Trinitarians there had no need to conceal their opinions.
The Transylvanian Prince, Stephen Bathory, protected them, and they had in the town of Krakau their own church, school, and printing-press. But the sect as a whole was torn by internal divisions. Faus...o...b..nt his whole energies to overcome these differences.
Before his arrival in Poland he had published two books, which are interesting because they show the pathway by which Fausto arrived at his theological conclusions. He started not with the doctrines of the Trinity or of the Person of Christ, but with the doctrine of the Atonement--a fact to be kept in mind when the whole Socinian system of theology is examined.
He believed that the real cause of the divisions which wasted the sect was that the Polish Unitarians were largely Anabaptists. They insisted that no one could be a recognised member of the community unless he was rebaptized. They refused to enroll Fausto Sozzini himself, and excluded him from the Sacrament of the Supper, because he would not submit to rebaptism. They declared that no member of their communities could enter the magistracy, or sue in a civil court, or pay a war tax. They disagreed on many small points of doctrine, and used the ban very freely against each other. Sozzini saw that he could not hope to make any progress in his attempts to unite the Unitarians unless he was able to purge out this Anabaptist leaven. His troubles can be seen in his correspondence, and in some of his smaller tracts in the first volume of the _Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum_.[635] In spite of the rebuffs he met with, he devoted all his energies to the thankless task of furthering union, and in the end of his days he had the satisfaction of seeing that he had not laboured in vain. Shortly before his death, a synod held at Krakau (1603) declared that rebaptism was not necessary for entrance into a Unitarian community. Many of the lesser differences had been got rid of earlier. The literary activity of Sozzini was enormous: books and pamphlets flowed from his untiring pen, all devoted to the enforcing or explaining the Socinian theology. It is not too much to say that the inner history of the Unitarian communities in Poland from 1579 until his death in 1604 is contained in his voluminous correspondence. The united Unitarians of Poland took the name of the _Polish Brethren_; and from this society what was known as Socinian theology spread through Germany (especially the Rhineland), Switzerland, and England. Its principles were not formulated in a creed until 1642, when the _Racovian Catechism_ was published. It was never formally declared to be the standard of the Unitarian Church, but its statements are universally held to represent the views of the older Socinians.
Socinianism, unlike the great religious movement under the guidance of Luther, had its distinct and definite beginning in a criticism of doctrines, and this must never be forgotten if its true character is to be understood. We have already seen[636] that there is no trace of any intellectual difficulties about doctrines or statement of doctrines in Luther"s mind during the supreme crisis in his spiritual history. Its whole course, from the time he entered the Erfurt convent down to the publication of the Augsburg Confession, shows that the spiritual revolt of which he was the soul and centre took its rise from something much deeper than any mere criticism of the doctrines of the mediaeval Church, and that it resulted in something very much greater than a reconstruction of doctrinal conceptions. The central thing about the Protestant Reformation was that it meant a rediscovery of religion as _faith_, "as a relation between person and person, higher therefore, than all reason, and living not upon commands and hopes, but on the power of G.o.d, and apprehending in Jesus Christ the Lord of heaven and earth as Father."[637] The Reformation started from this living experience of the believing Christian, which it proclaimed to be the one fundamental fact in Christianity--something which could never be proved by argument, and could never be dissolved away by speculation.
On the contrary, the earliest glimpse that we have of Lelio Sozzini is his meeting with friends to discuss and cast doubts upon such doctrines as the Satisfaction of Christ, the Trinity, and others like them.[638]
Socinianism maintained to the end the character with which it came into being. It was from first to last a criticism and attempted reconstruction of doctrines.
This is sufficient of itself to discount the usual accounts which Romanist controversialists give of the Socinian movement, and of its relation to the Protestant Reformation. They, and many Anglicans who have no sympathy with the great Reformation movement, are accustomed to say that the Socinian system of doctrines is the legitimate deduction from the principles of the Reformation, and courageously carries out the rationalist conceptions lurking in all Protestant theology. They point to the fact that many of the early Presbyterians of England and Puritans of America have furnished a large number of recruits to the Unitarian or Socinian ranks. They a.s.sert that the central point in the Socinian theology is the denial of the Divinity of our Lord, which they allege is the logical outcome of refusing to accept the Romanist doctrine of the Ma.s.s and the principle of ecclesiastical tradition.
The question is purely historical, and can only be answered by examining the sources of Socinian theology and tracing it to its roots. The result of such an examination seems to show that, while Socinianism did undoubtedly owe much to Humanism, and to the spirit of critical inquiry and keen sense of the value of the individual which it fostered, most of its distinguishing theological conceptions are mediaeval. It laid hold on the leading principles of the Scotist-Pelagian theology, which were extremely popular in the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and carried them out to their logical consequences. In fact, most of the theological principles of Socinian theology are more akin to those of the Jesuit dogmatic-which is the prolongation of Scotism into modern times--than they are to the theology of Luther or of Calvin. It is, of course, to be remembered that by discarding the authority of the Church the Socinians are widely separated from both Scotists and Jesuits. Still the roots of Socinian theology are to be found in the Scotist doctrines of G.o.d and of the Atonement, and these two doctrines are their starting-point, and not the mere negation of the Divinity of Christ.