I’m compiling links to popular portrayals of the siege of Münster. I’ll update this post from time to time
WARNING: Be aware that most interpretations of Ana/baptist rule in Münster are based far too uncritically on the accounts of enemies. If you listen to these podcasts, please remember to practice the best habits of critical and historical thinking.
Cover of Dan Carlin, “Prophets of Doom,” Hardcore History, episode 48 (2013)
This is a quick introduction to using Zotero, a bibliographic tool that is unique and powerful because it allows for individual and collaborative work. Its main audience is intermediate- and graduate-level university students. I created this introduction originally for Gary Waite and his graduate students at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. This is background for the example later in this page. Suggestions for improving this introduction to Zotero are welcome. Read more
What’s your family history mystery? One of mine has to do with this photo.
PLEASE CIRCULATE! Call for Papers! Refusing to Fight: Reimagining War @Brocku October 2018. https://t.co/8soj0Fg1xQ #twitterstorians pic.twitter.com/bOSwUHLyTo
— Colin Rose (@crosehistorian) September 7, 2017
ORIGINAL POST (May 2017): The Blasphemy of Jan of Leiden is the oldest text by Menno Simons, and it indicates that he was an early opponent of the Anabaptists of Münster. This, at least, has long been the consensus view about early Mennonite history. A challenge for researchers, however, is that the oldest copy of The Blasphemy is from 1627. This post introduces a project to find out more about this 1627 text.
UPDATE (Sept 2019): The transcription project is still in planning. Brookelnn Cooper has completed her MA research paper (“Identifying the Anonymous Printer of Menno Simons’ The Blasphemy of Jan van Leiden [1627]: A Typographical Analysis”) and her degree at Brock U, and she has begun doctoral studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, where she’s working with Jeffrey Collins.
I created this post on the second full day of the conference of the Intl Assoc for the History of Religions.
This post consists of a gallery of early modern Dutch Mennonite artists (or those who were a part of Mennonite milieus, even though they might not have been congregational members). The list is far from exhaustive, but it provides a quick sense of just how involved in the arts Mennonites were. For more details about Mennonite artists, or Anabaptist portrayed in art, click the tags “art” or “portrait”. Read more
Since 25 June is the anniversary of the fall of Münster to siege forces, I have brought this post from June 2015 to the top of the blog, and I have updated the post in a few places.
Inspired by the Twitter hashtags #executedtoday and #onthisday, I have been looking through the Global Anabaptist-Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (gameo.org) from time to time. Today I came across this note in the GAMEO article by Irwin Horst on “England”:
The first Anabaptists in England, according to various polemical treatments written in the 17th century and later, came from Holland subsequent to the seditious uprising at Amsterdam on 10 May 1535 (A Short History of the Anabaptists, 1642, 48). The source of this information is Lambertus Hortensius, a Dutch ecclesiastic and chronicler, who lived contemporary with the events and whose Tumultuum Anabaptisticarum was first printed at Basel in 1548, but he nowhere holds that these Anabaptists were the original ones in England. The 25 Dutch Anabaptists arrested and brought to trial at St. Paul’s on 25 May 1535, 14 of whom were condemned and burned at London and other English towns on 4 June 1535, may have been members of the party mentioned by Hortensius.
I am noting Horst’s work here so I can find it again on a rainy day and look into this further. Please let me know if you know anything more about the early history of English “Anabaptism”.
