Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Interior of the church in Witmarsum, Friesland, rebuilt in 1961 in the traditional style. A portrait of Menno, in
oil, hangs on the left wall. (Credit: Jan Gleysteen)
dering pastor, concerned with looking after the
spiritual welfare of his brothers and sisters in
the faith. He worked in Groningen and East
Friesland, at the same time studying and writing
pamphlets to strengthen and guide those
in need of spiritual help, and to win those in
danger of losing their evangelical faith. From
the time of his leaving Witmarsum in 1536 until
1554 he was a hunted man, and for much of the
time he had a price on his head. He wrote in
1544 that he “could not find in all the countries
a cabin or hut in which my poor wife and our
little children could be put up in safety for a
year or even half a year.” He worked hard in
East Friesland, at times moving further afield
to Cologne, Lübeck and Danzig. He carried
on extensive theological controversies with
Roman Catholics and Calvinists, and also had
to deal with numerous problems in his own
fellowship. For twenty-five years he carried
on this most difficult work, for the most part in
secret, travelling and meeting with his people at
night. With the human defects he had, (Menno
was crippled in his later years), he nevertheless
took on himself the life of a disciple of Christ,
willingly carrying the cross of suffering. His
great concern was for the church of Christ, and
his motto, well known to all of us, but of which
we must always be reminded was: “Other foundation
may no man lay than that is laid, which
is Jesus Christ.” He called on all to repent of
their sins, to receive God’s offer of forgiveness,
to be baptized upon the confession of faith, to
enter the New Jerusalem, the church, live there
in obedience and holiness, and to do good to
everyone. Menno Simons died on January 31,
1561, but his labours follow him in the worldwide
fellowship of Mennonite churches.
Revolution and Reformation
The times of Menno, the first half of the
sixteenth century, were times of radical and
revolutionary transition. His world was in
process of metamorphosis; it was changing
from what it had been into something else.
This was true in almost every respect. Some of
the changes had begun long before Menno was
born, and had not yet reached completion at his
death. It was a day such as ours, in which the
old order was passing never to return.
We shall begin with what might be called
the political situation of the day in Western
Europe. The ancient cathedral of St. Machar
in Aberdeen, Scotland, is not much to look at.
In fact, it is ugly. The towers are squat and ungraceful.
The apses and the chancel collapsed
several centuries ago and are no longer there,
but this old cathedral has something that no
other European cathedral has, namely a unique
ceiling. Again it is not beautiful; there is no
intricate stonework, no graceful vaulting, and
no lofty pillars on which it is supported. It is
flat and somewhat dark, being constructed of
dark timbers in a sort of checkerboard pattern.
Each of the squares contains a coat of arms, and
in the centre there is one somewhat larger and
more magnificent than the rest. The ceiling was
put into the cathedral and decorated in this way
about the year 1550, and represents the Holy
Roman Empire as it then was: the Emperor’s
coat of arms in the centre, and those of all the
individual rulers who owed allegiance to him
all around. That ceiling represents a nostalgic
dream held by the bishop of St. Machar’s, and,
what is more important, held by Charles V who
became emperor in 1519. He was the last of
the emperors of an age that was passing away;
an age in which both emperors and popes had
worked for a Europe united under one crown
and one church. At times there had been a
measure of success in this attempt, particularly
during the time of Charlemagne in the late
eighth and early ninth centuries. Charles V considered
himself to be a second Charlemagne,
and to him, as to Charlemagne, “the religious
and political unity of Christendom was both the
ideal purpose of his life and a practical object
of policy.” 1 Through a series of unexpected
deaths and marriages Charles was ruler of an
area of Europe practically as large as that of
Charlemagne. He was emperor of Austria and
Tirol, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, parts
of Italy, and also a large area in the Americas.
It was Charles’s dream to keep Europe united
under one crown and one church, but the time
for its realisation was past. Both Emperor and
people wanted peace; in fact, many people believed
that the Empire was the last chance for
peace in Christendom. Charles V was called
“the restorer of the Roman Empire” and “the
future ruler of the whole globe.” 2
Perhaps no part of the Empire desired peace
quite as much as the Netherlands, the home of
Menno Simons, for they were the very centre
of the Empire’s trade and industry. The people
of the Netherlands complained of having to
fight the Emperor’s wars, and that Spanish
troops were kept in the Netherlands to keep
the people in their place. Taxes were heavy
and prices were constantly rising. Towns like
Leiden, long prosperous due to its weaving
industry, were losing their prosperity, thus
causing unemployment among artisans and
dislocation of the social structure. From 1530
onwards, Anabaptists and Lutheran preachers
found a ready hearing among the discontented
artisans of the industrial towns. But although
everyone wanted peace, there was no peace.
Although all wanted political unity in the interests
of prosperity and religion, Charles failed
to give it. The old order was changing, things
were not as they had been, and no idealism
could bring back the unity of state and church
as it had been under Charlemagne. Charles’
abdication in 1555, six years before Menno’s
death, “was his own recognition of the failure
of the last attempt to re-establish the medieval
Melchior Hoffman, founder of Dutch, North German
Anabaptism. (Visser and Sprunger, Menno Simons,
p. 21)
Preservings No. 26, 2006 -