Balthasar Hubmaier, Der uralten und gar neuen Lehrer Urteil, Augsburg 1526 (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4 Polem. 1604)

Balthasar Hubmaier (around 1485–1528), pupil of Johannes Eck (1486–1543) and since 1516 preacher at the cathedral of Ratisbon, was significantly involved in the expulsion of the Jews from the imperial city in 1519 and in the emergence of the pilgrimage movement to the “Beautiful Virgin Mary”.

In 1521, he came as a priest to Waldshut (today in Baden-Württemberg) in the province of Further Austria, where he engaged with reformatory theology and was in contact with the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531). However, there were soon differences of opinion between the two, regarding the baptism of children.

In the autumn of 1524, Hubmaier introduced the Reformation in Waldshut and, at Easter 1525, he was christened together with 60 Waldshut citizens. At the same time, Waldshut was on the side of the insurgents during the Peasants’ War of 1524/25. When Habsburg troops occupied the city in December 1525, Hubmaier fled to Zurich and after his expulsion in 1526 to Nikolsburg in Moravia. There he again established an Anabaptist congregation. In the summer of 1527, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (1503–1564, archduke 1521–1564, Roman king from 1531, emperor from 1558) had him imprisoned and burnt as a heretic in Vienna on 10 March 1528.

Hubmaier influenced the Baptist movement with his theological writings. He completed the text “Der Lehrer Urteil” (The Teachers’ Judgement) in Nikolsburg, the foreword is dated to 21 July 1526. In this work, he tries to justify his rejection of the baptism of children based on the New Testament and on the church fathers and to legitimise the baptism of the brethren.

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