We've had the opportunity to mention on various occasions that there was considerable opposition to the performers, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin. Particularly, on issues of doctrine and on the relationships between the church and civil authority. But, to talk about the radicals simply in those terms, as oppositional figures, by no means does justice to the rich and vast array of thought and practice that we find across the 16th century, and into the 17th. Remarkable figures, extraordinarily brave who stood up in protest, who led groups of persecuted across Europe often going from Western Europe into Eastern. Who wrote accounts of martyrdom and persecution. Who preached in extremely difficult circumstances. Who wrote and published, and yet, whose ideas cannot be limited to one or two bullet points. The range of what we broadly call radical thinking, in the 16th century is mind-boggling. And I want, in a few moments, just to give you a sense of some of those ideas and to look at one or two of the key figures Radicalism has it's start really in direct, but it draws on late medieval lines of thought. We've mentioned this before, when we talked about something that already from the circle around him, there were those who became impatient. With the pace or seeming slow pace of reform. Who were very concerned about the relationship between scripture alone, the Bible as authority, sole authority, and practices such as the sacrament of infant baptism. Where in scripture does one find the baptism of infants, they asked. It was a question that Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, would all struggle to answer and they would do so in a variety of different ways. But they knew, they understood, the point was being made, of what was the relationship between the teaching of the church. Much of which had been inherited from the ancient and medieval worlds, and what's said in the Bible. And if we were to say a few things about what characterized radical, religious thoughts in the reaffirmation, we'll have to start with the Bible. And a powerful resonance of soulless scripture. And a sense that one needs to get back to the spiritual and disciplinary life of the first Christians of the apostles. To restore the purity of the church, not going to some particular moment in history. But going right back to the beginning, to it's apostolic origins. And the only way back to it was through the Bible. So, what we name as radicals, were people who had a powerful vision of what reform really should be. Not the kind of compromise that they thought people like Luther and Zwingli and Calvin had made. Adapting the faith to tradition, accommodating political realities, halfway houses as the Puritan critics in England had said of the church, a reformation unfinished. So, sola scriptura, a return to An apostolic past but there was more. A profound spiritual individual and corporate Christian life, and insistence on a rigorous Christian living, and that rigor should reflect outwardly in all that a person did. How he or she, conducted his or her self. And so, the point was that Christian communities should only consist of those who are godly. And the godly can be seen by the way in which they conduct themselves. So, we get here the beginnings of churches that separate themselves from the community. Separate themselves from other churches, to become bodies of the elect. So, along with this is a range of other ideas such as from acts that all things should be held in common. So, the heretical views of these groups had extraordinary implications for the nature of the society in which they saw them self living. In a very critical relationship to the larger society, and a self-sustaining body of those who are chosen by God. And those are just a few broad principles. How they manifest themselves in the 16th century, is in a remarkable number of ways. There is no one, although the Swiss Anabaptists around Cyric are the beginning point. There is no one starting point for this. It's multiple places. With multiple forms of expression. One of the most influential figures is someone we've already encountered here,Thomas Müntzer, Luther's great rival. Who was actually in the peasants war, ultimately arrested, tortured, and killed. But, had this visionary sense of a new Jerusalem. It was a brutal one in which the godly would strike down the ungodly. But nevertheless, this sense of a vision of a new kingdom, such as it was carried out to such disastrous effect in Munster. But nevertheless, the spiritual side of this is very important part of radical religious thought in the 16th century. The spiritualist not by no means, anything like as brutal as Montzer was, but spiritualism is in incredibly important part of the believe world of the radicals. So, to was the experience of persecution. We talked about with Calvinism and the reformed that martyrdom, persecution exile, were defining experiences and they were experiences to which Calvin could speak very clearly. And people heard, he gave them a way of seeing themselves as persecuted people within the world under the promises of god. But Calvin was not alone, one of the major figures, amongst the so called radicals, in this respect, was a man from Friesland, named Menno Simons. Had been a priest and had a conversion experience. Read Luther, following his reading of scriptures. The study of scriptures which, he said he never learnt well as a priest. Simons became a major figure in Dutch and a baptism, because he came to reject the idea of infant baptism. For this he suffered terribly, but his writings were such that he developed a huge following and became one of the most significant figures in shaping Dutch Anabaptism. Groups would then leave and go into exile, and of course his name remains as closely associated with the Mennonites and his teachings. But he's one of the most important figures in developing this idea of persecution and martyrdom. And suffering as integral to the religious experience of the true Christian. That finds expression here, in one of the works associated with the Mennonites or with Menno Simons. And that is the martyr's mirror, written in 1660. Here we have an image from the 17th century, but of an event takes place in 1560. The drowning of Anabaptist. Drowning had been a way of executing Anabaptists. It had begun in Zurich in 1525 by drowning people. It was thought you were, in a way, mocking the mockery they had made of baptism. It was a cruel fate for those who charged them thought that they had desecrated the sacrament. So, you drowned them. And here we have an image here. And this is, this image, it's from 17th century, portrays very much the spirituality of the 16th, that I'm talking about. The courage of the woman, as she looks at the monk or friar here, who's pointing looks towards the water. But she's courage, she has steadfast in the face of her eminent execution. This picture here captures, I think beautifully, the spirituality and piety of those groups in the 16th century. Who saw themselves as persecuted and suffering for the lord's sake. Radicalism took many forms in the 16th century. For some it was groups, like those around Menno Simons and others. For others, it was individuals. Thinkers who develop radical ideas, visionaries. They were almost always pushed to the margins. But, it's yet their thinking that in many ways proves to be highly transformative in the 17th century, in the decades to come.
