Year:    2010

Author:    Laubach, Ernst

Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Vol. 37 (2010), Iss. 3 : pp. 411–439

Abstract

In the 16th century, King Ferdinand I of Bohemia (among others) suspected the Anabaptists of planning an insurrection and of conspiring with the Turks against Christian authorities. As the existence of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe was perceived as a permanent threat to Christianity, it shall be proved, whether the reproaches of the King were wholly or partly justified. The paper investigates the positions of various Anabaptist denominations and leaders towards the syndrome “Turkish Danger” and the meaning of the “Turks” in their theological thinking. The earlier interpretations that the Turks had to be understood as a scourge of God or had the apocalyptic function of “Gog and Magog” in the Bible were specified in the late 1520s by some radical Anabaptists that in a very short time the Turks should annihilate the “Godless” and only the “Elected” (i.e. the Anabaptists) would survive and subsequently rule over the world in the name of or together with Christ. But there had been neither any substantial political projects nor contacts with the Ottoman Empire. Nearly all Anabaptists, however, strictly refused to take part in any sort of defence against the Turks (like Luther in some early papers). Although the Hutterite communities in Moravia lived in vicinity to the Ottoman Empire, they too held the same position. The Hutterites did not reflect at all on the Ottoman danger, not even during and after the “Long war” in Hungary between 1593 and 1606, and they denied the disseminated eschatological speculations.