Framing Religious Leadership in Dutch Nationalist Confessional Historiography: Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine in the 1540s–1550s

Abstract

This article examines the convention in Anabaptist historiography that Menno Simons (1496–1561) and in his wake Dirk Philips (1504–1568) increasingly stabilized the Anabaptist movement and built an extensive Anabaptist network in the Habsburg Netherlands/Northern Germany, from Friesland and Groningen to Holland and Flanders in the west and to Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein to Poland in the east and back. The focus is on the development of Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine, in particular on the de-centralized religious leadership of local, cross-border Anabaptist bishops. It challenges the consensus narrative in the historiography of an alleged central role of Menno and Dirk and demonstrates that during the formative years 1540–1550, Anabaptism on the Lower Rhine and in the Habsburg Netherlands/Northern Germany was polyphonic, represented by itinerant local bishops, each with their own – albeit overlapping – network.