Anabaptists, a term often applied to those Christians who reject infant baptism and administer the rite only to adults; so that when a new member joins them, he or she, if baptised in infancy, is baptised a second time. The name (from Gr., 'to baptise again') is thus due to an accidental circumstance, and is disclaimed by the more recent opponents of infant baptism both on the Continent and in Great Britain. It is properly applied to a set of fanatical enthusiasts called the Prophets of Zwickau, in Saxony, at whose head were Thomas Münzer (1520) and others, who appeared shortly after the beginning of the Reformation. Münzer went to Waldshut, on the borders of Switzerland, which soon became a chief seat of anabaptism, and a centre whence visionaries and fanatics spread over Switzerland. They pretended to new revelations, dreamed of the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and summoned princes to join them, on pain of losing their temporal power. They rejected infant baptism, and taught that those who joined them must be baptised anew with the baptism of the Spirit; they also proclaimed the community of goods and the equality of all Christians. These doctrines naturally fell in with and supported the 'Peasant War' (q.v.) that had about that time (1525) broken out. The sect spread rapidly through Westphalia, Holstein, and the Netherlands, in spite of the severest persecutions. At the battle of Frankenhausen the princes of Saxony, Hesse, and Brunswick crushed its progress in Saxony and Franconia. Still, scattered adherents of the doctrines continued. Melchior Hoffmann, a furrier of Swabia, who appeared as a visionary preacher in Emden in 1528, installed a baker, John Matthesen, of Haarlem, as bishop. Matthesen began to send out apostles of the new doctrine. Two of these went to Münster, where they found fanatical coadjutors in the Protestant minister Rothmann, Knipperdolling, Bockhold, and others. With their adherents, they soon made themselves masters of the city; Matthesen set up as a prophet, and, encouraged by a previous success, lost his life in a mad sally, with only thirty followers, against Count Waldeck, the prince-bishop of Münster, who was besieging the town. The churches were now destroyed, and twelve judges were appointed over the tribes, as among the Israelites; and Bockhold (1534) had himself crowned king of the 'New Zion,' under the name of John of Leyden. The anabaptist madness in Münster now went beyond all bounds. The city became the scene of the wildest licentiousness; until several Protestant princes, uniting with the bishop, took the city, and by executing the leaders after the cruellest tortures, put an end to the new kingdom (1535).
But the principles disseminated by the Anabaptists were not so easily crushed. Adherents of the sect had been driven to the Netherlands; and in Amsterdam the doctrine took root and spread. Bockhold also had sent out apostles, some of whom had given up the wild fanaticism of their master; abandoning the community of goods and women, they taught the other doctrines of the Anabaptists, and the establishment of a new kingdom of pure Christians. They grounded their doctrines chiefly on the Apocalypse. One of the most distinguished of this class was David Joris, a glass-painter of Delft (1501-56), who devoted himself to mystic theology, and sought to effect a union of parties. He acquired many adherents, who studied his Book of Miracles (Wunderbuch), which appeared at Deventer in 1542, and looked upon him as a sort of new Messiah. Being persecuted, he withdrew from his party, lived innocently at Basel, under the name of John of Bruges, and died there in the communion of the reformed church.
The rude and fanatical period of the history of anabaptism closes with the scandal of Münster. A new era begins with Menno Simons (see MENNONITES), who collected many of the scattered adherents of the sect, and founded congregations in the Netherlands and in Germany. His followers, however, expressly repudiated the distinctive doctrines of the Münster fanatics; and so little had their sober and moderate life in common with the excesses of the latter, that the application of the term Anabaptists to them is unjustifiable. As a matter of fact, the German Anabaptists have left no representatives; and those bodies in England and America who only resemble them in the practice of adult baptism are discussed under the title of BAPTISTS.