THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

iswitz and Wadzeck, one cannot determine with any accuracy when the first Anabaptists arrived in Prussia. The members of the Prussian congregations, for the most part simple country folk, did not write much. Everything that was known about these things in 1820 had been orally passed on from one generation to another. b) According to the Prussian historian Hartknoch the first Ana- baptists came to Prussia from Silesia. He names Eccelius and Tankerus (according to others Fabian Takelius) as their teachers. These appear to have been Bohemian-Moravian quietists, that is nonresistant Hussite brethren (of Slavic origin). Reiswitz and Wadzeck marvel at the fact that these could be called Anabaptists. It had been deliberately forgotten that these Bohemian-Moravian brethren had practiced believer’s baptism from 1467 to about 1636, as had a portion of the Waldensians, with which the pacifistic Hussites, when they organized themselves as the Unitas Fratrum (brotherhood) in 1467, had come into intimate contact because they had requested ordination 18 of their bishops at the hands of the Waldensian bishops. Like the Waldensians, they too refused the oath and military service; they also practiced footwashing. With regard to their dogma, however, they seem, like the Waldensians, never to have fully clarified all the issues or severed themselves completely from Roman Catholic ideas until the Reformation. 19 But a life in imitation of Christ (and as a consequence a strict church discipline) was for both the chief dogma. It was the Lutheran and Calvinist reform movements which aided them in clarifying their dogmatic beliefs, whereas for the Anabaptist movement Menno Simons was most important. Unfortunate- ly, precisely at the time when Menno was rebaptized, the Bohemian Brethren gave up believer’s baptism in order to win the friendship and protection of the Saxon reformers, and instituted confirmation or “the renewing of the baptismal vow” in its place (ca. 1535); nevertheless as late as 1560-70 the Lutheran historian Flacius complained that this act of confirmation “lacked only the water in order to become a rebaptism.” 20 These concessions, however, have not prevented them from being tragically destroyed, whereas the Mennonite Anabaptists have, in spite of the most severe persecutions, never had fewer than ten thousand members. Like the Bohemian-Moravian Brethren, the Waldensians of Savoy and the Piedmont also dropped the practice of believer’s baptism 21 and instituted infant baptism in order to win the approval of the Genevan Reformers, and later also, in contrast to their old Prussia 43 evangelical usage, reached for the sword to defend themselves from religious persecution! The present Waldensians, existing in only a small remnant— ca. 18,000, according to some 25,000, according to others, fewer— have retained much that is good from their early history and constitute a salutary evangelical element in Italy.