Europe in the Age of the Reformation

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The Anabaptists

Spread of Anabaptism into Germany

Blaurock went to the Tyrol, where he met with some success. He was captured and burned in 1529, but the Tyrol became an Anabaptist stronghold. Jakob Huter was Blaurock's successor. He fled to Moravia later, where he founded the Hutterites.

The early leader of the Anabaptists in Moravia was Balthasar Hubmaier. This area still remembered and revered John Hus and Jerome of Prague, and were receptive to anti-Catholic ideas. Hubmaier left Moravia in 1525 and the following year founded a center at Nikolaberg, where he was joined by Hans Hut. Hubmaier was the more conservative, but Hut was a millenarian fanatic and an enthusiastic preacher. The barons of Lichtenstein, sympathetic to Hubmaier, arrested Hut in 1527, but Hubmaier was himself captured by imperial authorities not long after. On 10 March 1528, he was burned at Vienna. Three days later, his wife was cast into the Danube River, a stone around her neck.

The center of anabaptism now shifted to Austerlitz and the leadership of Jakob Huter, also fleeing from the Tyrol. Huter enjoyed great success, founding as many as eighty-six Brüderhofe (villages of brethren) that ranged in population from 200 to 2000. Huter was captured in 1536, taken to Innsbruck, and there burned.