Renaissance · Europe · Religion

1526

Anabaptists Emerge in Zurich

1526

A group of Zurich radicals, impatient with Zwingli's pace of reform, rebaptized one another in a private house and rejected infant baptism entirely. Persecuted by Protestants and Catholics alike, the Anabaptist movement would spread across Europe, producing Mennonites, Hutterites, and eventually the martyrs of Muenster. Their insistence on adult baptism and church-state separation made them the most persecuted group of the Reformation, hunted by Catholics and Protestants alike.