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

concept of Christian unity under the leadership
of emperor and pope.” 3
The most important single reason for
Charles’ failure to actualize his dream was the
religious revolt called the Reformation. There
had been demands and movements for reform
for about two hundred years, but those who
were the key to the reformation of the church
held the reins of power in church and state.
They benefited by its abuses—today we call
it conflict of interest—and therefore nothing
came of it. John Wycliffe in England and Jan
Hus in Bohemia tried, but were by and large
unsuccessful. It remained for Martin Luther,
the Augustinian monk, to begin again, and this
he did in 1517. He wanted to reform the church,
not break with it, but his reformation was too
radical; it cut right across the vision of emperor
and pope of a Europe united under the imperial
crown and the triple tiara. It exposed as
unscriptural much of the then current teaching
of the church. What had begun as a plan for reformation
became a revolt when Luther publicly
burned the papal document that condemned
his writings in December, 1520. The support
of the German nobility protected Luther from
the death of a heretic, and, through the medium
of the new technology of printing, his writings
spread far and wide like little bits of explosive
that helped bring down the rule of the Church
of Rome in Western Europe and destroy for ever
the dream of Charles V. This was therefore the
time when people discovered again the foundations
of New Testament Christianity: that one is
saved by grace through faith, and not through
the works of the law. It meant the destruction
of the unity of the church because the church
refused to be reformed so radically. The time
of Menno Simons was therefore the beginning
of a new day for the church of Christ.
An engraving of Menno Simons by Jan Luyken in
1681 in Amsterdam. (Visser and Sprunger, Menno
Simons, p. 76)
Science and Technology
But there were other factors as well that
mark Menno’s time as a new day. About eighty
years before Menno’s conversion, printing was
invented in Europe. Some decades before that,
the process for making paper had been invented,
so that by the year 1410 there were paper mills
in most European countries. There were those,
of course, who looked with contempt on this
new material, but gradually its commercial
value was realized, and when the printing press
came along in 1450, an inexpensive printing
material was already available. It meant that
the cost to produce a book was now relatively
low and also that it retailed at prices which, although
high by our standards, even low income
people could manage if they were thrifty. Growing
literacy created an increasing demand for
books. The universities were experiencing an
unprecedented influx of students that resulted
in the lowering of standards of academic excellence,
but also in a demand for more books.
Soon there were large printing concerns in
many cities, but also many itinerant printers
whose stock and materials could be put in a
cart. It was an itinerant printer who published
Menno’s works; the house in which this was
done is still standing.
Printing was an important factor in the
break-up of the old order. The volume of books
and pamphlets that poured from the printing
presses of Europe could not be effectively
censored by church and governments. But they
tried: books were burned and prohibited, but
they were printed in secret and circulated by
individuals. Two years before Menno’s death
the pope established an index which contained
the titles of books harmful to the church, among
them books by Luther, Erasmus, and Menno.
But prohibition only served to make those
books more popular, especially in Protestant
areas. The attempt by the churches to control
ideas, and here one must also include the large
Protestant churches, was frustrated by the
printed book.
The time of Menno was also a time of new
developments in agriculture and science. The
catastrophe usually referred to as the Black
Death occurred in 1350. About one-third of the
population of Western Europe died, and for one
hundred and twenty-five years, Europe suffered
from the effects. About 1475 a change began.
There was an enormous population increase
which appeared to people of that day to be a
serious problem indeed, and ways of dealing
with it were suggested. Some said that another
plague was needed. Others suggested a largescale
war. By the year 1500, a few years after
the birth of Menno, the high population had
stimulated demand for increased production. In
the meantime peasants had attained a measure
of freedom from their landlords, so that they
began to take more personal interest in their
land. The result was that production went up.
Peasants sold their own produce and enjoyed
the proceeds themselves. During Menno’s
years, the work of reclaiming land from marsh
and sea in the Netherlands and northern Germany
continued. Because of the demand for
An engraving of Menno Simons by Abraham de
Cooge in ca. 1650. (Visser and Sprunger, Menno
Simons, p. 75)
farm produce, farmers experimented with new
crops like turnips and clover. This in turn led to
the production of a large volume of literature on
farming and farming methods, now possible because
of printing. New crops and the increasing
demand for farm products led to new methods
of cultivation, and so we could go on. Of all
this, Menno must have been aware, or perhaps
he was even quite familiar with these changes
since it is possible that he himself was born on
a farm. Many of those whom he served must
have been farmers who would have spoken to
him about their problems. In agriculture much
was new and changing.
The great scientific revolution did not come
until several generations after Menno’s death,
but Menno’s day saw some of the developments
that prepared the way for it. Certainly a new
interest in science was widespread. The discovery
of the scientific works of ancient Greece and
Arabia stimulated the curiosity of Menno’s contemporaries.
But now, instead of merely getting
information from old books, there were those
who began to gain new knowledge on the basis
of observation. There was more application of
the scientific knowledge to practical uses. In
medicine, for example, the human body was
being dissected to learn more about its structure
and function. The science of geometry became
increasingly important for navigation, for surveying,
and for gunnery. There was increased
interest in astronomy. It was Copernicus, the
Polish astronomer, who died in 1543 while
Menno was working in East Friesland, who
propounded the theory that the earth and the
planets revolve around the sun, a view that was
still dangerous then because it seemed to contradict
Scripture. Perhaps the most significant
thing about science in Menno’s time was that it
was becoming increasingly secularized. For a
long time the clergy of the Roman church had
been the guardians of learning; from now on the
- Preservings No. 26, 2006