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The Reformation
Münster
The local leaders of the Anabaptists were Bernhard Knipperdolling and Bernhard Rothmann. Early in 1533 they were joined by Jan Matthys and other Dutch refugees, and Matthys (a follower of Hoffman) soon emerged as the leading figure.
Münster was in Catholic territory, and a Catholic army was soon formed to be sent against the city. Matthys ordered that no un-baptized adults should remain in the city, and many were baptized rather than leave the city and risk falling into Catholic hands. There began a movement toward a community of goods that later, in both Catholic and Lutheran propaganda, was presented as complete communalism.
In April 1533, Matthys and others were killed in an attack on the Catholic army. His place was taken by another Dutch leader, Jan Bockelson of Leyden, who abolished the city council completely, appointed twelve elders, and proclaimed himself king. The city was under continuous siege, and only a few thousand of the most radical Anabaptists remained.
In July 1534, the city allowed polygamy, mainly because there were by this time four times as many women as men, and many thousands of children. Bockelson himself took sixteen wives. This was as much a work of social legislation as it was a statement of religious ideology. Nevertheless, actions like these served to make the city, and Anabaptists, notorious throughout Europe.
In the summer of 1535, the city was betrayed by a deserter. The Catholics stormed the city and pillaged it. The leaders were executed.
Münster sealed the fate of the Anabaptists. Catholics, Calvinists and Lutherans alike sought to eradicate them from their territories, as accounts of what was practiced and proclaimed at Münster grew more and more lurid.
In Holland and Friesland alone, between 1535 and 1545, over thirty thousand Anabaptists were put to death. Luther and Calvin both wrote virulent tracts against them, as did scores of lesser writers.
Of all the many Anabaptist communities, two notable groups survived: the Hutterites in Moravia, and the Mennonites (named after Menno Simons) in Germany and Holland. But the persecutions in the wake of the massacre at Münster ensured that Anabaptism would exist only on the margins of European Christianity.