I hope you have come with a good set of choppers, because there is a lot to digest within the context of Anabaptist History. The Anabaptists were a small radical group that solidified as a movement in 1525. During the Reformation, Europe was in a gyroscrope of motion with new ideas that stemmed from both the political and religious disharmony of the era. It truly was a topsy turvy era, in the grip of moving from the medeival to the modern. From the Pope, to the Crowns, to merchant class, all the way downs to those who were in servitude as serfs, had ideas of what was theologically correct, what was orthodox, what was heresy, and what was to be the penalties for such heresies.
Sins that at one time could be forgiven through the absolution of the local parish priest, would now be unforgivable. Allegiances to the Royal Crowns of Europe,the Papal Crown or both would lead to much human suffering if one did not fall into the dominate religious-political sphere in which one was born or lived and their beliefs fell into keeping with those who held religous/political control. For many they changed allegiance to crown and church, upon the decision of the crown.
The Crown, such as Prince Frederick III, began to see the usefullness to Luther's theology, not just it's emphasis on grace, but that the state may no longer pay taxes, or religious tribute, to the Pope. Germans saw the French, as the pope's little pet, especially due to the time in which the Papal City was moved to France. The Pope was most often an arbritrator, of land disputes between the two countries and often lands were allocated to the French Lords, by the Pope. They believed the pope did not have the German people's interest at heart and their papal taxes/indulgences were too high.
During the Reformation, the two protestant groups were centered in the countries in which the movement was founded for Lutherans, Northern Germany, for those who followed Zwingli, who would later be called the Reformed, Lived in Switzerland and later North Eastern France, The Counter Reformation, was led by the Jesuits who came in the 1530's and were found to hold sway in Southern Germany and Austria. The Anabaptists, lived in Strasbourg and in the lower Prussian states. However unlike their contemporaries the Anabaptists held little political sway.
This decentralized movement and its lack of political prowess lead the local crowns and magistrates to see these re-baptizers as trouble makers who sought to deligitmate the crown by not pledging oath to defend the crown and her territories. For this reason is why the Anabaptists movement has been called the "Radical Reformation". These radicals were thereby subjugated to a group of what many today might dub as spiritualists, socialists, anarchists.
These people who were living on the cusp of the modern era, began to take their faith in other directions than the their Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran counterparts. They believed that they most adhere to the Catholic tradition's "love by doing" they believed that they Eucharist was a memorial feast in keeping with the Reformed, Lutherans, they maintained the belief in the two kingdom model but took it to the next level, as a whole. Believing that they must not take up the sword for the government. They were known for believing above all else that one must have a believers baptism, as an adult. This is why they were dubbed Anabaptist, a slur which meant "twice/ or re-baptized".
This is just a little taste of some of the history of the Anabaptist movement.
Come and companion me through the history of the Radical Reformation
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