@book{2021:rothkegel:the_swiss_,
title = {The Swiss Brethren: A Story in Fragments},
year = {2021},
note = {This study offers a new perspective on the question how the Upper
German Anabaptist traditions of the 16th and 17th centuries became
part of the Mennonite denominational family. In modern scholarship, it
is a commonly accepted usage to apply the group name "Swiss Brethren"
to early Swiss Anabaptism starting with the circle around Conrad
Grebel and Felix Mantz in Zurich, who introduced the practice of
believers' baptism in January, 1525. It was not before 1538/9 that the
name "Swiss Brethren" first ap­peared in the sources, but referring
to a group in Moravia and southwest Germany rather than in
Switzerland. Based on a detailed analysis and contextualization of 141
sources which bear evidence of the group name "Swiss Brethren", dating
from the 1530s to c.1618, the present study suggests to abandon the
commonly accepted identification of the Swiss Brethren with early
Anabaptist groups on Swiss territory or with a specifically Swiss
tradition within Upper German Anabaptism. Instead, the bits and pieces
of in­for­mation contained in the analyzed sources adumbrate the
picture of an expanding underground denomination. Until 1555, most
Swiss Brethren congregations were located in Moravia and southwest
Germany. In 1555, Anabaptist groups in the Lower Rhine area joined the
clandestine network. In 1591, the Swiss Brethren formed a church union
with the Frisian Mennonites, which was joined by the Waterlanders in
1601/2. A number of documents bear witness that even the Socinian
Polish Brethren pressed to be received into the united Anabaptist
church. Remnant groups of the Swiss Brethren/High German tradition
survived the Thirty Years' War in the Swiss cantons of Zurich and Bern
(whence many of them emigrated to Alsace and to the devastated
Palatinate), in the duchies of Julich and Berg, and in the
Netherlands. Most of them would eventually identify with the (Flemish)
Mennonite tradition between the 1630s and the 1660s. Although the
story of the Swiss Brethren can be reconstructed in outline,
substantial questions remain open. It is therefore presented as a
"story in fragments" rather than a synthetic narrative. Based on
extensive archival research, the study is intended as the first of
three volumes, the second of which will be devoted to the leadership
and structures of the Swiss Brethren, and the third to their
literature, doctrines and reli­gious practices.},
edition = {1},
publisher = {koernerverlag},
address = {Baden-Baden},
series = {Bibliotheca Dissidentium scripta et studia},
volume = {9},
author = {Rothkegel, Martin}
}