Littell's Living Age/Volume 176/Issue 2279/The Peace-loving Mennonites

Amid the fertile meadows of Friesland, in east Holland, near the town of Bolsward, there stood for many centuries a flourishing abbey, bearing the name of the Oldeclooster. In 1535 it was the scene of a terrible conflict. A party of three hundred excited Anabaptists, headed by one Peter Holtsagher, and accompanied by many women and children, marched upon the abbey, took the monks by surprise, and expelled them from their comfortable dwelling. The abbot appealed to the governor of Friesland for help, and a regiment of soldiers, with artillery, soon appeared upon the scene. The Anabaptists, refusing to surrender, were subjected to a siege of several days; but at length they were overpowered, and the victors took cruel vengeance upon them. A gallows was erected outside the abbey, on which twenty-four of the Anabaptists were at once hanged, fifteen more were beheaded, and the rest of the men were slaughtered in various ways. The women and girls were taken to Leeuwarden, and drowned in the canal, close to the old guardhouse, which is still to be seen by the visitor to that city. Amongst the victims of this massacre was an Anabaptist named Simonsz, whose brother Menno, then a Roman Catholic priest, witnessed his death. This scene made a profound impression upon Menno. It gave him a lifelong horror of war and of every form of either offensive or defensive fighting. He admired the zeal and fervor of the Anabaptists so much that he became convinced of the truth of some of their leading principles, and, leaving the Roman Church, joined their body. But he would have nothing to do with arms thenceforth. After what he had witnessed, his whole soul shrunk with detestation from every kind of resort to the sword. He saw that both the Anabaptists and the German Reformers generally had made a great mistake in resorting to force for the propagation and defence of their religious tenets. Menno, therefore, advocated a policy of non-resistance and of absolute reliance on the divine protection, and on the convincing power of truth in itself. But most of his contemporaries were unprepared for such a doctrine as this. The Anabaptists, like the Cromwellian Puritans of the following century, were active partisans of Jewish and Old Testament modes of dealing with their enemies; so Menno had to withdraw from his new friends. On the other hand, the German Reformers treated him with even more decided contempt, so that speedily poor Menno found himself, like his divine Master, “despised and rejected of men.” A price was set upon his head, and for a long period he was literally a fugitive and a wanderer upon the earth. But he steadfastly adhered to his pacific convictions, and gradually his gentle, loving spirit and his fidelity, at any price, to non-resistance principles, attracted to him the love and respect of a few friends, who entreated him to become their minister and teacher. The number of these adherents increased, in spite of persecution. Amongst their bitter opponents was Martin Luther; but another German, a warrior nobleman, of Holstein, Count Ahlefeld, was so struck with admiration of the meek but brave heroism of Menno, that he offered him an asylum on his own estate, near Hamburg. There, sheltered from all foes, whether Catholic or Protestant, Menno spent the last few years of his life, and there, at the age of sixty-three, he peacefully died, in 1559 (just after the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the English throne). He had become the founder of a Church of many thousand adherents, who became known by,the name of Mennonites, and, as such, retain an organized existence to the present day. They have chiefly inhabited Friesland, north Germany, and the Vosges Mountains, west of the Rhine; but under the stress of occasional interference with their scruples, many of them have emigrated, in the first place to south Russia, and more recently to the United States and Manitoba. Menno’s views strikingly resembled and anticipated those of the Society of Friends, who came into existence nearly one hundred years after his decease. The Mennonites have contributed so largely to local and civic prosperity, in various districts, that even German emperors and Russian czars have invited them to settle in their dominions, on the express condition that they should, amongst other privileges, enjoy absolute exemption from military service. The Prussian king, in 1847, manifested some disposition to curtail their privileges, but at length, in 1867, Bismarck and the present emperor took the decisive step of withdrawing from the German Mennonites their exemption from the conscription and from military obligations. But in recognition of their past services to the State, certain alleviations of this rigorous order were permitted. In a few instances, hospital or other unarmed public service was allowed in lieu of joining the army; and in other cases, faithfully conscientious members of the sect were permitted special facilities for emigration to America or elsewhere. But the young Mennonites, in general, have, since 1867, been placed on the same footing, as to the conscription, with other Germans. And it must be confessed that these Mennonite youths have, in most instances, shown that they had not been trained to prize the convictions of their forefathers; their peace principles had already been widely relaxed. In 1870, hundreds of them willingly took up arms against France. This circumstance is recorded by a modern Mennonite historian, Mr. Max Schön, with gratification. And he adds, that he, like his brothers of the sect, was proud to take a part in what he terms “that glorious war against the hereditary enemy of the German nation." But some of the Mennonites, elsewhere, have been faithful to their earlier convictions. Especially in south Russia, where also the modern government has withdrawn the former privileges of exemption from military service, many hundreds of the sect have quietly refused to comply, and, in consequence, have emigrated to America, chiefly to Manitoba, where they have carried their great skill in the cultivation of hemp, which, whilst they lived in Russia, had been so profitable to the resources of that empire. But now their Manitoban hemp trade is becoming a formidable rival to the Russian commerce in the same material. It was a very foolish policy on the part of the Russian government, thus to drive away such profitable subjects. Many Mennonites still remain in Holland, especially in Friesland, where they retain much of the religious earnestness of their forefathers.