baptism; with Osiander’s adherents in the matter of justification; with his colleague, Nicholas von Amsdorf, to whom he had resigned the Eisenach superintendency; with Flacius Illyricus, and others. He lost favour with Duke John Frederic of Saxony, fell into bad health, was deposed (1555) from his offices, and was disappointed in his hopes of being reinstated after the colloquy at Eisenach (1556). He died at Leipzig on the 11th of August 1558. He was twice married, and had several sons, of whom Eusebius held a chair of philosophy at Wittenberg, and married Melanchthon’s grand-daughter, Anna Sabinus. Schmidt gives a full bibliography of the numerous writings of Menius, who translated several of Luther’s biblical commentaries into German. His Oeconomia was reprinted in 1855.
See G. L. Schmidt, Justus Menius, der Reformator Thüringens (1867); Wagenmann, in Allgemeine deutsche Biog. (1885); G. Kawerau, in Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (1903). (A. Go.*)
MENKEN, ADAH ISAACS (1835–1868), American actress,
was born in New Orleans, the daughter of a Spanish Jew, her
name being Dolores Adios Fuertes. Left in poverty at the age
of thirteen, she made her first appearance as a dancer in her
native city. She had a great success there and in other southern
cities, including Havana, and she afterwards aspired to act
in serious parts. In 1856 she married John Isaacs Menken,
translated Adios to Adah, and thus took the name she thereafter
bore through various matrimonial ventures. In 1864 she
appeared at Astley’s in London as Mazeppa, a performance of an
athletic dramatic type suited to her fine physique. In England
and France she became intimate with many literary men—Swinburne,
Charles Reade, Dickens (to whom she dedicated in
1868 a volume of verse, Infelicia), Gautier and Dumas the
elder. Paris saw her for a hundred nights in Les Pirates de la
Savane, and she also played in Vienna and again in London.
She died in Paris on the 10th of August 1868.
MENNONITES, a body of religionists who take their name from Menno Simons (see below), the most valued exponent of their principles. They maintain a form of Christianity which, discarding the sacerdotal idea, owns no authority outside the Bible and the enlightened conscience, limits baptism to the
believer, and lays stress on those precepts which vindicate the
sanctity of human life and of a man’s word. The place of
origin of the views afterwards called Mennonite (see Baptists)
was Zürich, where in 1523 a small community left the state
church and (from Jan. 18, 1525) adopted the tenet of believers’
baptism. Unlike other Reformers, they denied at once the
Christian character of the existing church and of the civil
authority, though, in common with the first Christians, it was
their duty to obey all lawful requirements of an alien power.
By Protestants as much as by Catholics this position was not
unnaturally regarded as subversive of the established foundations
of society. Hence the bitter persecutions which, when
the safety of toleration was not imagined, made martyrs of
these humble folk, who simply wished to cultivate the religious
life apart from the world. There was something in this ideal
which answered to that medieval conception of separation from
the world which had leavened all middle-class society in
Europe; and the revolt from Rome had prepared many minds
to accept the further idea of separation from the church, for the
pursuit of holiness in a society pledged to primitive discipline.
Hence the new teaching and praxis spread rapidly from Switzerland
to Germany, Holland and France. While the horrors of
the Münster fanaticism, which culminated in 1534, made Anabaptism
a byword, and increased the severity of a persecution
directed against all Baptists indiscriminately, the reaction
against the fatal errors of the Münster experiment increased
also the adherents of communities which discarded the sword;
thus Menno was brought into their ranks. Each community
was independent, united with others only by the bond of love.
There was no hierarchy (as with the Familists), but “exhorters”
chosen by the members, among them “elders” for administering
baptism and the Lord’s Supper; an arrangement so readily
renewed that the sure way of putting down such a body was
the execution of all its constituents, often by drowning, an appropriate
end, according to Zwingli’s quip. The remnant of
the Swiss Mennonites (not tolerated till 1710) broke in 1620 into
two parties, the Uplanders (or Amish, from their leader Jacob
Amen) holding against the Lowlanders that excommunication
of husband or wife dissolved marriage, and that razors and
buttons were unlawful. In Holland the Mennonites have always
been numerous. An offshoot from them at Rhijnsburg in 1619,
founded by the four brothers, farmers, Van der Kodde, and
named Collegianten from their meetings, termed collegia (thus,
as not churches, escaping the penal laws), has been compared
to the Plymouth Brethren, but differed in so far as they required
no conformity of religious opinion, and recognized no office
of teacher. With them, as Martineau notes, Spinoza had “an
intense fellow-feeling.” Later, the exiled Socinians from Poland
(1660) were in many cases received into membership. There
had previously been overtures, more than once, for union with
Mennonites on the part of Polish Socinians, who agreed with
them in the rejection of oaths, the refusal to take human life,
the consequent abstinence from military service and magisterial
office, and in the Biblical basis of doctrine; differences of doctrinal
interpretation precluded any fusion. In Holland the
Mennonites were exempted from military service in 1575, from
oath-taking in 1585, from public office in 1617. In Zeeland
exemption from military service and oaths was granted in 1577;
afterwards, as in Friesland, a heavy poll tax was the price of
exemption from military service; but since 1795 they have
enjoyed a legal exemption from oath-taking. In France the
Mennonites of the Vosges were exempted from military service
in 1793, an exemption confirmed by Napoleon, who employed
them in hospital service on his campaigns. That he did not
exempt the Dutch Mennonites is due to the fact that “they had
ceased to present a united front of resistance to military
claims” (Martineau); in fact they sent a large band of
volunteers to Waterloo (Barclay). While in Germany the
Mennonites exist in considerable numbers, more important are
the German Mennonite colonies in southern Russia, brought
there in 1786 by Catherine II., and freed, by the grant of complete
religious liberty, from the hardships imposed by Prussian
military law. These colonies have sent many emigrants to
America, where their oldest community was settled (1683) at
Germantown, Pennsylvania. Their settlement in Canada dates
from 1786. Among the American Mennonites there are three
sections, and a progressive party, known as New School
Mennonites.
S. Cramer gives (1903) the following statistics: in all, some 250,000 members, of whom over 80,000 are in the United States, 70,000 in Russia, 60,000 in Holland, 20,000 in Canada, 18,000 in Germany, 1500 in Switzerland, 800 in France, and the same number in Poland and Galicia. (A. Go.*)
MENNO SIMONS (1492–1559), religious leader, was born in 1492 at Witmarsum in Friesland. Of his parentage (apart from his patronymic) and education nothing is known. He was not a man of learning, nor had he many books; for his knowledge of early Christian writers he was partly indebted to
the Chronica or compilations of Sebastian Franck. At the age of twenty-four he entered the priesthood, becoming one of two curates under the incumbent of Pingjum, a village near his birthplace. He accused himself, with the other clergy, of lax and self-indulgent living. Doubts about transubstantiation made him uneasy; some of Luther’s tracts fell in his way, and he was comforted by Luther’s dictum that salvation does not depend on human dogmata. Hence he began to study the New Testament. The question as to the right age for baptism came up; he found this an open matter in the early church. Then the execution, in March 1531, at Leeuwarden, of the tailor Sicke Freerks, who had been rebaptized in the previous December at Emden, introduced further questions. Menno was not satisfied with the inconsistent answers which he got from Luther, Bucer and Bullinger; he resolved to rely on Scripture alone, and from this time describes his preaching as evangelical, not sacramental. In 1532 he exchanged his curacy for a living at Witmarsum, in response to a popular call. Anabaptism of the Münster type
