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An engraving of Menno Simons by Pieter Holsteyn?,
ca. 1662. (Visser and Sprunger, Menno Simons, p.
71)
scientists were largely laymen who were less
concerned than churchmen to harmonize their
findings with official doctrine. It was the dawn
of modern secularism, the division between the
sacred and the secular.
It was during Menno’s lifetime that the
first great voyages of exploration were made
by Europeans. Christopher Columbus was
on his second voyage of discovery in the year
1496, the year of Menno’s birth. It is interesting
to note in this connexion that in time some
raised objections to these voyages of discovery
because, it was argued, people had enough to
do where they were without discovering new
lands that would presumably bring new problems.
Sebastian Brant, in his satire The Ship of
Fools, first published in German in 1494, wrote
words very reminiscent of some modern critics
of space exploration:
Some have explored a foreign land
But not themselves can understand.
This did not, however, discourage people,
for when Menno was sixteen years old a Spanish
explorer discovered Florida and in 1521-
1522, Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the
globe. In 1534, the year of Menno’s conversion,
Jacques Cartier sailed up what came to be
known as the St. Lawrence River. The days of
Menno were significant days, in that suddenly
the world was a globe rather than a flat surface,
and it was infinitely larger than anyone had supposed.
Unheard of wonders and possibilities
opened up before the eyes of Europeans. Since
Menno lived in the Netherlands and within fifty
miles of the greatest of all European trading
ports, Antwerp, it is likely that he heard many
tales about the new world , told originally by
Spanish and Portuguese seamen who came into
Antwerp from all over the world. It was a time
of widening horizons, of expectations, and of
surmise about what might lie in the future.
The age of Menno was one in which war
Pencil drawing of Menno Simons by Arend Hendriks,
1948. (Visser and Sprunger, Menno Simons, p. 99)
was constantly being waged in some part of
Europe or another. The one hundred years
ending with 1560 were more decisive for the
evolution of the art of war than any subsequent
period until the late eighteenth century. During
this time men broke with the past in the
art of conducting warfare. The discovery of
gunpowder gradually led to a complete change,
and since there were plenty of wars, lessons
were learned quickly. Military and national
leaders became increasingly concerned about
the possibility that defensive military secrets
might get into the hands of the great enemy of
the western world, the Ottoman Turks. Judging
from the example of the Roman Empire,
Europeans became convinced that the greatness
of a nation depended in the first place upon
its strength, and this was supplied by a strong
army. Strong military potential was looked
upon as a guarantee for peace in which the
arts and sciences could flourish, and the nation
could prosper, all of which sounds very modern
indeed. Seen against that background, the Anabaptist
insistence about living without weapons
(Wehrlosigkeit) was more than an ideal. It was
rather a grappling with the realities of life in a
real living context.
One more thing needs to be mentioned
to round out the picture. The sixteenth century
world was divided into East and West,
as is also the twenty-first. The great enemy of
Western Europe then, the Ottoman Turks, had
established a foothold in the Balkan peninsula
in 1345 and the centuries-long war between
Christendom and the “infidel”, as the Turks
were called, began to be fought on European
soil. In 1453 Constantinople, which had been
a Christian city for a millennium, fell to the
Turks after its walls had been destroyed by
cannons, and shortly thereafter it became the
Turkish capital, and renamed Istanbul. The
Turks conquered Greece and what are today
the Balkan republics and Albania, and from
the year 1521 onwards kept Europe in constant
terror by attacks against Hungary and Austria.
Martin Luther and other religious leaders of
the day, including some Anabaptists, believed
that the Turks were the rod of God’s anger
against Christendom, and that they were the
forces of evil in the days just preceding the
return of Christ and the end of the world. In
1529, five years after Menno’s ordination to
the priesthood, the main battle between east
and West took place at Vienna, the West gaining
the victory. It was not until ten years after
Menno’s death, that the threat was over, at least
temporarily.
The times of Menno were therefore times
of anxiety, fear and foreboding. At the same
time, many in Menno’s age thought, much as
we often do today, that in spite of all the trouble
and uncertainty, it was a great age in which to
live. Ulrich von Hutten, a humanist knight,
expressed this sentiment for his generation in
a letter of 1518 when he wrote: “O century! O
sciences! It is a pleasure to be alive!” It was
a coarse and rough age, but also a heroic one,
one that brought out the worst in men but also
the best. It was the age that produced Machiavelli
and the Borgias whose very names have
become synonymous with intrigue, murder
and the ruthless use of power. But it was also
the age that produced Erasmus of Rotterdam,
Martin Luther, Huldreich Zwingli and Menno
Simons.
Against that picture of a civilisation in a
state of change, a civilisation setting out on
new paths never trodden before, a civilisation
threatened with destruction from without and
within, we must look at the life and work of
Menno Simons. Menno was not a well-known
man in his time. Most of the world was much
too concerned with the great events that were
transpiring all around to take notice of a fugitive
priest who had become an Anabaptist preacher.
Our age is different from his in many ways,
but the call of God remains the same for us as
for Menno, the call to a new life in Christ, the
call to witness to that foundation which is laid,
which is Jesus Christ.
A Brief Bibliography
Voolstra, Sjouke, Menno Simons: His Image
and Message, Bethel College, North Newton,
Kansas, 1997.
Brunk, G. R. Menno Simons: A Reappraisal,
ed. Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg,
Virginia, 1992
Isaak, Helmut, Menno Simons and the New
Jerusalem, Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2006.
This article is a revision of one published
in No Other Foundation: Commemorative Essays
on Menno Simons, Bethel College, North
Newton, Kansas, 1962.
Endnotes
1 H. Königsberger, “The Empire of Charles V in Europe,”
New Cambridge Modern History, II (Cambridge University
Press, 1957), 301.
2 G.R. Elton, “Introduction: The Age of Reformation,”
New Cambridge Modern History, II (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1957), 11.
3 Königsberger, 315.
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