Hutterite Studies

Decoration on ceramics can be viewed as internal history, as the functional equivalent of the Anabaptist annalistic record. A significant part of the large Anabaptist archive survived in the so-called chronicles (240 are known today) that functioned as history books and have been transmitted to every new generation. As a result of the aggressive Habsburg policy against religious minorities, the Anabaptist communal organization was dissolved in 1685. A sudden decrease in written record followed. Around this date, the continental chinoiserie style appeared on Anabaptist ceramics. After careful visual analysis, these ornaments become narratives alongside the chronicles. Ceramics helped to keep the collective memory and Anabaptist identity alive. Both the texts and the ceramics were part of the same successful strategy of identity preservation; this rich heritage held together the Anabaptist communes from the sixteenth century to the present.

In 2013 the Canadian Pentecostal Symposium at SPS focused on the plight of Canadian Pentecostal Conscientious Objectors (CO). As Murray Dempster began to rehearse their struggles as “the ironic, the tragic, and the heroic,” I was moved to tears.  I was particularly shaken to hear that such atrocities had occurred in “my” Winnipeg. As a “cradle” Pentecostal, I felt betrayed. Why had I not heard these stories? In this essay, I proclaim what I believe deserves to be called the Pentecostal “testimony” of young David Wells and probe deeper into the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. To do so, I begin with the context for conscientious objection in Canada, Pentecostal allegiance, and immediate scene in Winnipeg. Then, I retell the story of Wells. I conclude with implications for further research and an exhortation for Pentecostals (and all Christians) to remember and somehow embody the life of David Wells, for his story is indeed our story.

In this thesis, I examine both how theology is conceptualized and how it is embodied in performance. Focusing on the Hutterites, an Old Order Christian communal group, I explore the interplay between history and tradition on the one hand and cultural adaptation and dynamic change on the other. Although Hutterites are often stereotyped as aloof sectarians who want nothing to do with secular society, I explore the rich and multifaceted world of Hutterite musical production, showing that the boundaries between sacred and secular are much more porous and variable than often admitted.

Through an in-depth examination of Hutterite choral singing in Manitoba, I show how individual Hutterites express their agency, engaging with past doctrine and their current cultural surroundings to fashion a performative life that makes sense out of both--what I call "performing salvation."

While the Anabaptist movement was still fl uid in the early 1520s, it soon crystallized into factions with sharp differences. Although the Moravian Anabaptists never succeeded in creating common doctrines and practices, the Central and East European experience was not merely a marginal part of the great Anabaptist story. Out of these divergent tendencies grew a strong sect that survived exile through a radical social experiment. Hutterite colonies, settled in a hostile environment, fl ourished for a long period while other sects disappeared within a few years. The factors that determined the advance and survival of the Hutterites point beyond religious motives. This social experiment was dependent on the integrated social structure enabling them to cope with an aggressive environment without assimilating. Various epochs of the Hutterite history show that communal life was never a uniform and perfect experience, but variants of the structure persisted in the colonies as they evolved in their local circumstances.

Emese Balint’s essay, ‘Anabaptist Migration to Moravia and the Hutterite Brethren’, investigates how community leaders restructured Hutterite communities in Moravia to manage waves of heterogeneous migration and promote internal stability as well as stable relationships with host authorities. The Hutterites relied on strict internal organization built around the community of goods and impressive social networks to survive waves of heterogeneous newcomers and to regroup and reproduce successful communities in subsequent re-exile.

One key to the success of ceramic production was the social organization of the Anabaptist colonies, which could be well described by passages drawn from More’s Utopia. This chapter prefers to place the social organization in the theoretical frame regarding innovation. The most distinguishing features of the Hutterites’ socio-economic organization were common ownership of all property and complete separation from the world. In this scheme, each member maximized their contribution to the community and secured a profit for expansion. The organization required a complex labour division, thus preferred metaphors were the clockwork and the beehive. Producing under the same roof, the Hutterites practised as many as 34 crafts and developed an economic profile that competed with the guilds in the region. Such a rigid organization is expected to stifle innovation; nevertheless, these workshops not only imported fresh knowledge via new immigrants but also functioned as sites of innovation. Ceramics offer an example of how innovation became part of the Hutterite survival strategy.

Der 1948 im südostmährischen Strážnice geborene Ethnologe und Archäologe Jiří Pajer ist zweifellos der beste Kenner der materiellen Kultur der Hutterischen Brüder im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. Pajers in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten veröffentlichte archäologische und archivalische Forschungen ergeben ein völlig neues und facettenreiches Bild der hutterischen Alltagskultur und handwerklichen Produktion. Der zum 70. Geburtstag des Verfassers veröffentlichte Sammelband mit "Neuen Studien über die Täufer" enthält zahlreiche neue, teilweise verblüffende Erkenntnisse.

The article reveals the issue of reception of the Anabaptist doctrine by Polish and Lithuanian antitrinitarians in the second half of the1560s. The author analyses consistent and religiously substantiated relations between the Anabaptists’ denial of infant baptism and social-ethic concept of non-resistance in the belief of Moravian Anabaptists (Hutterites). This belief was introduced to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland by Piotr z Goniądza, and it was perceived in some early works of Polish and Lithuanian Antitrinitarians. However, synods showed ambiguous reaction to Anabaptism: the majority accepted the Baptist doctrine, but they were not ready to meet its social-ethics demands.

The distinction between several original works of Hutterite historiography pro-posed in this preliminary exploration leads to a more complex picture of the Hutterite chronicles than Beck’s, Wolkan’s and Zieglschmid’s text editions seemed to suggest. Three major historiographical works were composed and released for multiplication between 1570 and 1590: The brief “Origin of the Church of Christ” by A. L., probably composed in 1570; the “Description of the Events from the Beginning of the World to the Present Time” based on a chronological treatise by Caspar Braitmichel probably written in the 1550s, but secondarily enlarged; and the “Concise Well-Grounded Manual” by Ambrosius Resch, based on records kept since the 1550s, but released for multiplication in enlarged versions since the 1580s.
Hauprecht Zapff’s “Great Chronicle” of 1580/81 marks the transition from individual historiographic projects to official annalistic historiography falling within the competency of the Hutterite church leadership. The “History of the Martyrs” of c. 1605, which is actually just a compilation of extracts gleaned from the “Great Chronicle,” was apparently released by the church leadership in order to replace “private” martyological compilations by an official, authorized Hutterite martyr book.
The Hutterite chronicles belong to the rare cases of Early Modern historiog-raphy authored by victims rather than by victors. An experience of disappoint-ment, betrayal and persecution by the magisterial reformers determined the Hut-terite perception of the Reformation. While all Hutterite chroniclers describe the rise of Luther and Zwingli as a decisive turn in salvation history which eventually led to the restauration of the true apostolic church, they articulated nuanced views on the questions whether there was a true church during the period of time between the fall of the Roman church under Constantine the Great and the restauration of believers’ baptism in 1525; whether the testes veritatis of the dark intermediate age professed the full truth or had only an imperfect faith; and whether Luther’s and Zwingli’s doctrines were sufficient for salvation to those who died as evangelical martyrs before 1525.
The high appreciation for Thomas Müntzer as a founder of Anabaptism and martyr of truth was “eliminated” (to use Günter Vogler’s expression) in official Hutterite historiography after 1580, but Müntzer’s memory was kept alive in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century copies of the “Origin of the Church” (even in the latest copy dated 1662). Antitrinitarian views as those of the ancient heretic Arius and of the Anabaptist martyr Ludwig Haetzer were approved in many copies of the “minor chronicles,” but were not mentioned in the offical “Great Chronicle” or the “History of the Martyrs.”
In the eyes of the Hutterites, Luther and Zwingli were not only prophets who fell short of their mission, but they eventually became instruments of antichrist just like the pope and the whole Roman church before them. The “signs of the beast” which mark the distinction between the true Christians and the realm of antichrist are sometimes identified with infant baptism and the doctrine of transubstantiation or real presence. Most important, though, is that the true church, in contrast to Luther and Zwingli, does not enforce faith by violence and persecution, because “faith is a gift of God and cannot be forced.”

Mit den biblischen Motiven des Exodus der Israeliten aus Ägypten, der Wüstenwanderung des Gottesvolkes, des Gelobten Landes und der Landnahme, des Babylonischen Exils, des prophetisch-apokalyptischen Rufs „Geht hinaus aus Babylon!“ (Jes 48,20; Jer 50,8; 51,6.45; 2Kor 6,17; Offb 18,4), der Rückkehr aus dem Exil, des Wiederaufbaus des von den Gottlosen zerstörten Tempels, der Völkerwallfahrt zum Zion und der Vision des Neuen Jerusalem als Ziel der Heilsgeschichte (Offb 21f) war christlichen Gruppen der frühen Neuzeit ein gemeinsamer Vorrat an Metaphern und Deutungsmustern zur religiösen Verarbeitung von Flucht- und Migrationserfahrungen vorgegeben. Nicht selten kam es dabei zu Gleichsetzungen des Migrationsziels mit dem Gelobten Land oder gar dem Neuen Jerusalem, teils im Sinne einer unverbindlichen rhetorischen Metaphorik, teils aber auch mit recht konkreten Implikationen. Neben den französischen Glaubensflüchtlingen, die in Calvins Genf ein „Neues Jerusalem“ sahen, seien die puritanischen Siedler genannt, die in Neuengland theokratische Gemeinwesen gründeten, um dort die Wiederkunft Christi zu erwarten,  oder auch die niederländisch-reformierten Siedler, die seit dem 17. Jahrhundert nach Südafrika kamen und ihren Anspruch auf den Besitz des Landes mit einer aus biblischen Texten hergeleiteten Bundestheologie legitimierten. Zu einer vergleichbaren geographischen Konkretisierung – typologisch-ekklesiologisch verstandener – alttestamentlicher Motive kam es im 16. Jahrhundert bei täuferischen Flüchtlingsgemeinden, die auf adligen Grundherrschaften in Südmähren Asyl fanden. Ähnlich wie später die Puritaner in Neuengland und die niederländischen Siedler in Südafrika entwickelten die Hutterer einen mit alttestamentlichen Wendungen gesättigten, ausgeprägt „zionistischen“ Sprachcode zur Beschreibung ihrer Migrationserfahrung. Zu beachten ist allerdings der entscheidende Unterschied, dass die Täufer keinen Anspruch auf den Besitz des Landes, das sie als den ihnen von Gott angewiesenen Ort ansahen, erhoben.

After the Bohemian Brethren, the church of the Hutterian Brethren in Moravia was the second largest nonconformist faith community in the Bohemian lands in the period before the Battle of White Mountain. The Hutterites produced an ample body of historiographic writings. As an illegal religious minority, the Hutterites had no access to the printing press, and virtually all of their literature was transmitted in manuscript. Modern research has been focused on the most comprehensive work of Hutterite historiography, the Great Chronicle compiled by Hauprecht Zapff, “secretary to the brethren elders,” in 1580/81. Its narrative spans from the creation of the world to Zapff’s lifetime, and was continued by his successors in the office of secretary down to 1665. The Great Chronicle has been published twice, first by Rudolf Wolkan in 1923 and second by Andreas Johannes Friedrich Zieglschmid in 1943. Their publications had been preceded by an edition of excerpts gleaned from dozens of smaller chronicle manuscripts by Josef Beck which appeared in 1883. Beck believed that the small chronicle manuscripts were but excerpts of the Great Chronicle which he thought to be lost. Even after the discovery of the Great Chronicle, no attempt has been made to test this hypothesis. The present study tries to reconstruct the evolution of Hutterite historiography more precisely.

The nature of the Anabaptist diaspora explains why the sect was so efficient a transmitter of techniques. In the face of persecution, the Anabaptists mastered space by settling in colonies and devising resilient networks in order to rescue fellow believers. Along these networks, circa 20,000 refugees arrived in Moravia, who brought skills related to various crafts. Theories of exile and migration explain how the Anabaptists could develop elaborate tactics: the strong flow of migrants ensured their steady number, while the internal cohesion made them prosper despite being in a war zone. Survival was a dour experiment; nevertheless, they coped with aggressive environment without assimilating. Cohesion implied rigid control; paradoxically, these regulations pushed for innovation: potters specialized in vessels whose elaboration surpassed the Italian originals. This set the value of their wares and conquered high markets.

Film review of "49th Parallel" (1941), written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.  Received the Academy Award for Best Story; nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.  This film of six stranded U-Boat crewmen on the lam in Canada in the first years of World War II, before the U.S. had entered the conflict, is powerful.  Regarding it as a "propaganda" film is too facile.  It helped viewers see Nazi evil and that the world was in a mortal struggle.

This article discusses geographic analytical units of plain Anabaptist groups relevant for conceptualizing spatial dispersion across Canada and the United States. All plain Anabaptist groups are tied to the land, hence, the religious values, cultural traditions, and social organizations of plain Anabaptists are intimately and reciprocally bound up with geography. We discuss six geographic units of the plain Anabaptists and describe how we gathered information about their locations. These include: local church, local affiliation, settlement, region, broad affiliation, and global region. We present maps of their geographic distribution throughout Canada and the U.S., noting spatial patterns. Hence, this article provides a geographic introduction to plain Anabaptist groups, which are defined further in the next article, “Who are the plain Anabaptists? What are the plain Anabaptists?” (Anderson 2013).

The Hutterian Brethren were the most significant church denomination to emerge from the Upper German Anabaptist movements during the Reformation. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, the Hutterites planted about 60 community settlements in small country towns on the domains of tolerant nobles in south Moravia. A safe haven for persecuted Anabaptists from neighbouring countries, these Hutterite Bruderhöfe became a melting pot of Anabaptist traditions with an estimated 20,000 persons congregating by the end of the 16th century. The early Hutterites did not depend on farming for their livelihood, but on craft production and highly qualified services. They developed a unique way of life that combined the religious principles of strict pacifism and community-of-goods with elements of contemporary urban culture. The Hutterites achieved an exceptionally high level of literacy among their membership in an age when the majority of the Catholic and Protestant population could neither read nor write. Because they were not permitted to operate a printing press, Hutterites set in motion a highly effective system of manuscript multiplication in order to provide books for thousands of readers beginning around 1565.

Lecture 1:  The Inner and the Outer Word: Living with the Bible
Saturday, May 29, 2021 https://www.jdmlectures.org/

The Reformation made the Bible available in vernacular translations, but the Protestant territorial churches undertook no efforts to distribute copies of the Bible to lay believers. Access to a New Testament or a full Bible was the privilege of those who could afford one of the costly editions. The Hutterites, in contrast, provided each member with a copy of the New Testament and made copies of the full Bible accessible in shared spaces where members were encouraged to meet for Bible reading during leisure hours. In order to secure a sufficient number of copies, the Hutterites bought up large numbers of certain Bible editions—preferably early editions printed in Zurich and Worms during the 1520s and 1530s. Before being approved for use within the community, all incoming copies were manually annotated and rebound in characteristic leather bindings. Bible reading was at the centre of Hutterite piety. This seems to be in stark contrast with the verdict that the “outward letter” is dead and useless for salvation, which is often affirmed in Hutterite writings. How can we make sense of this?

Lecture 2: Books for the Church of God: Reading Materials and Manuscript Multiplication
Friday, June 4, 2021 https://www.jdmlectures.org/

There was a wall of separation between the Hutterite church and ‘the world:’ becoming Hutterite involved leaving one’s home, severing social ties, giving up personal property, and detaching oneself from the pursuit of ‘worldly’ knowledge (with the exception of practical knowledge, e.g. technical or medical). Hutterite Prediger exercised strict control over reading materials circulating within the community. Religious texts by Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed authors, as well as fictional and recreational literature, were banned. On the other hand, writings by the non-sectarian Spiritualist Sebastian Franck, vernacular translations by Erasmus of Rotterdam, works of the Schwenckfeldian Adam Reissner, and Anabaptist devotional texts by Menno Simons and Pilgram Marpeck were appreciated by the Hutterites. Besides the Bible, the reading materials deemed most appropriate for rank-and-file members were the letters and confessions of faith composed by Hutterian martyrs and missionaries. All members were encouraged to copy pocket collections of martyr letters and confessions for personal use. Even school children participated in producing manuscript copies of devotional texts and songbooks. The result was a rich heritage of beautifully penned manuscript volumes, a small part of which is still preserved in European libraries and among the Hutterites in the U.S. and in Canada.

Lecture 3: History written by Victims: The Hutterite Chronicles
Saturday, June 5, 2021 https://www.jdmlectures.org/

The Hutterite church claimed to be the restituted primitive apostolic church of the last age. While Hutterites did not deny the possibility of achieving salvation outside the “Church of God in Moravia,” they asserted that the rise and development of their Gemein formed the concluding chapter of God’s history with humanity from creation to their time. Besides the large Chronicle, das große Geschichtsbuch, which was compiled by Hauprecht Zapff in 1581 and continued by Hutterite church leadership to 1665, there were several minor historiographical works. Some of the minor chronicles antedate Zapff’s large Chronicle. The Hutterite chronicles and martyr books are very valuable sources not only for the history of the Hutterite church and Anabaptism, but for the age of the Reformation in general. They belong to a small collection of Early Modern histories written by victims rather than victors. The chronicles were vigilantly kept out of reach of outsiders. Exclusively intended for a readership inside the Hutterite church, these fascinating texts were sharp and outspoken in their criticism of the dominant forms of Christianity and of the violent persecution exercised by the state churches. Long before religious liberty and the separation of church and state became generally accepted principles of modern societies, the Hutterite chronicles condemned sectarian violence, religious coercion, and all forms of state religion.

The nature of the Hutterite diaspora explains why the sect was so efficient a transmitter of techniques. In the face of persecution, the Anabaptists mastered space by settling in colonies and devising resilient networks in order to rescue fellow believers. Along with these networks, circa 20,000 refugees arrived in Moravia, who brought skills related to various crafts. Theories of exile and migration explain how the Hutterites could develop elaborate tactics: the strong flow of migrants ensured their steady number, while the internal cohesion made them prosper despite being in a war zone. Survival was a dour experiment; nevertheless, they coped with the aggressive environment without assimilating. Cohesion implied rigid control; paradoxically, these regulations pushed for innovation: potters specialized in vessels whose elaboration surpassed the Italian originals. This set the value of their wares and conquered high markets.

The roots of the Anabaptist ceramics go back to Italy, but this connection is not a simple one. This chapter will build on technology transfer theories to demonstrate that the Moravian communities acquired the technique through a complex diffusion. The process started with the Anabaptist population in Faenza, an important Italian maiolica centre. After a mass expulsion in 1569, they sought refuge in northern Italy and followed the Anabaptists’ migratory fluxes towards Eastern Europe. When production started in Moravia, the obvious Italian design was combined with German elements, just as the exile population was a mix of Italians, Tyroleans and South-Germans. Alongside, Ottoman features began to blend into the design. The Anabaptist wares differed from the indigenous pottery; nevertheless, with the rustification of the distinctive features, their influence survived to this day in the local folk ceramics. How Anabaptist ceramics acquired typical features is more than a direct transfer; the process involves acculturation and followed a complex diffusion pattern.

The Hutterite faience is massive in output, varied in form but very distinct amid the tin-glazed pottery of early modern Europe. Their design is typical to this sect, easily recognizable by the forms, the ornament, the rich white glaze and the four 'maiolica colours', all of which evoke a braided Italian, German and Swiss heritage. The first intact pieces survive from 1593, and the production continued until the 1750s. Archaeological finds show that the early production was restricted to twelve centres in the fertile wine-growing regions of Moravia. From here it spread, along with the Hutterite colonies, to the adjoining vinicultural districts of present-day Slovakia, Hungary and historic Transylvania. Getting closer to the objects naturally involves an understanding of the makers, the puritan Anabaptists, as well as recognizing their buyers, the local élite. This is how we start our journey into the biography of the Hutterite ceramics that will lead us into exploring the survival strategies of an exiled community.

Reformation era martyrdoms in Zürich marked the beginning of the Anabaptist movement (Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites).  From around the globe, members of these groups travel to Switzerland in search of a better understanding of their history, theology and family origins.  In 2004, reconciliation events took place wherein the Zurich city council and the Reform Church in Switzerland formally requested forgiveness, which was given, of a group of Anabaptist church leaders. Then in 2007, the Swiss government tourism authority in Emmental organized a year-long series of reconciliation events. This paper will examine the impact of the events in 2004 and 2007 on inter-group relations in the light of some relevant aspects of conflict resolution theory.  An interface with tourism and pilgrimage research is suggested through the concept of reconciliation tourism.