ProQuest Dissertations - The University of Arizona Campus Repository

to region and country. While they had successfully destroyed Anabaptist churches in
South Germany. Austria and Tyrol, persecutions in Switzerland and the Netherlands did
not manage to fulfill their deadly missions (Bender and Smith 1974:23. 47 and 49). As
the Netherlands gained complete independence from Spain during the late 16th century.
William of Orange granted religious tolerance under which the Mennonites began to
flourish (Schroeder and Huebert 1996:112-113; Wedel 1901:15-16).
Persecution, torturing and killing of Anabaptists could not kill the faith that quickly
spread from its cradle in Zurich, Switzerland (1525)'" and reached the northern shores of
Germany and the Netherlands during the early 1530s. These northern followers of
voluntary church communities, originally unified only by their religious beliefs, gradually
came to be identified as one ethno-rcligious movement, the Dutch-North-German
Mennonites, which became distinct from the Swiss believers (Francis 1948:103; Redekop
1995:10). These northern Anabaptists look back upon a 400 year long history of
migration that led various of their groups from the Netherlands to Prussia, then Russia.
Canada. Mexico and South America (Bender and Smith 1974; Epp 1974 and 1982:
Savvatzky 1974; Smith 1957). In the following summary of Mennonite migrations, 1 trace
the Mexican Mennonite groups from their beginnings in the Netherlands and Northern
Germany to their settling in Chihuahua, Mexico," before 1 turn to their local history in
Chihuahua.
Northern European Anabaptists The Swiss Brethren's message arrived in the city of
Emden, Germany and in the city of Amsterdam, Holland during 1530, and soon it also
reached other regions of the Netherlands. Melchior Hofmann had carried the seeds of the
Brethren's faith to northern Europe. Unfortunately, Hofmann's emphasis on the imminent
See Figure I: Central Europe around ISSO fFrom Schroeder and Huebert 1996:9).
" For a visual description of these movements and group organization, see Figure 2: The Migrations of
Mennonites from the Dutch Lowlands to Mexico's High Plateau.
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