What? An authoritative source like wikipedia?
*SNORT*.
Or this one?
Eh, ran across it online maybe ten years ago when someone was talking about random heresies & various nutburgers of the Middle Ages.
It was more a historical curiosity from their point of view, it wasn't even a Catholic site.
What? An authoritative source like wikipedia?
*SNORT*.
Or this one?
Latourette dedicated a whole Chapter to this movement, titled "THE RADICAL REFORMERS: THE ANABAPTISTS," PAGES 778-787. Here are a couple of excerpts re our discussion:
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They sought holiness in doctrine and life (Page 779):
"Anabaptists maintained a high standard of morality. Indeed, theirs was an ethical as well as a religious urge. They did not believe in salvation by works, but they taught if salvation was genuine it would issue in good works. They expelled from their fellowship those who slipped from their standards. Even among their severe critics were those who admitted that they were honest, peaceable, temperate in eating and drinking, eschewed profanity and harsh language, and were upright, meek,, and free from covetousness and pride. Many were abstainers from all alcoholic beverages. They endeavored fully to live up to the ethical standards of the Sermon an the Mount. The Catholic way of striving for Christian perfection was that of the monastery, communities of celibates away from the world. The Anabaptists were akin to the monks in seeking perfection in communities separate from the world, but, unlike the monks, they married."The Anabaptist attempt to capture and control the Munster municipality failed (Pp. 783-784):
"Usually Anabaptists were bitterly persecuted by other Protestants and Catholics, for to both they seemed to be dangerous revolutionaries, upsetting the established order. Some may have had a continuity from groups that had been regarded as heretics in pre-Reformation centuries. Violence all but stamped them out on the Continent, Yet some survived."
"The Anabaptists obtained control of Munster and there attempted to organize what they believed to be a Christian society. The Bishop laid siege. Aided by Lutherans and Catholics he took the city (June 24, 1535), Matthys* had already perished in a sortie. The surviving leaders, including Jan of Leiden, were tortured and killed, and the authority of the bishop was reestablished,=========
The effect of the Munster episode was to confirm the bad odour attached to the name of Anabaptist. Reports circulated of the extremes to which Anabaptist fanaticism had gone during the months of stress in community of property, polygamy, and the ruthless suppression of opposition. As is the manner of such reports, they grew as they were told and retold and departed further and further from the facts, Actually private property had not been abolished and, while some of the leaders had contracted polygamous marriages, severe laws were enacted against adultery and fornication. Although only a minority of the Anabaptists were involved, and these chiefly from one strain of the movement, that associated with Hoffman*, it was popularly believed, especially among the governing and respectable classes, that all Anabaptists made for chaos in government, society, morals, and religion."
* prominent Anabaptists
But reading over the whole chapter, it is quite clear that the Anabaptists were a classification of a type of independent, autonomous, Bible-preaching, monagamous-practicing assemblies of believers seeking New Testament holiness, a class of believers still present in today's society in great numbers.
I also think that they were quite influential in overcoming the corruption then present throughout Europe.