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Pilgram Marpeck (died 1556), also Pilgram Marbeck or Pilgrim Marpeck, was an important Anabaptist leader in southern Germany in the 16th century.
Marpeck was a native of Tyrol, Austria. His father, Heinrich Marpeck, moved from Rosenheim in Bavaria to Rattenberg, Austria, where he served as a city councilman. Heinrich also served as a judge (1494–1502) and mayor (1511). Pilgram attended the Latin school in Rattenberg.
Before his days as an Anabaptist, Pilgram Marpeck enjoyed a good financial status and was a highly respected citizen of Rattenberg on the Inn River. He was a mining engineer, a member of the miners' brotherhood, and served on both Rattenberg's inner and outer councils.
Records of Marpeck's conversion to Anabaptism are not extant. It is known that in his position as a mining magistrate, he was required by Archduke Ferdinand to expose miners in sympathy with the Anabaptist movement. Leonhard Schiemer was executed by authorities two weeks before Marpeck left his mining position on 28 January 1528. It is generally believed that he lost his position because he refused to aid authorities in capturing the Anabaptists. Marpeck was quickly reduced from a prominent citizen of Rattenberg to a "wandering citizen of heaven".
From 1528 to 1532, Marpeck lived in Strasbourg, serving for two years as a timber supervisor, before he was expelled from the city because of his Anabaptist activity. For the next 12 years, he lived a wanderer's life in Switzerland, and traveled to Tyrol, Moravia, South Germany, and Alsace. He is believed to have established Anabaptist congregations in these areas.
In 1544, Pilgram Marpeck was working in the city forest of Augsburg, and on 12 May 1545 he was employed as the city engineer, a position he held until his death in December 1556. His services were evidently in great demand, for, although the city issued reprimands and warnings to desist, Marpeck continued his activities as a minister among the Anabaptists.
In addition to his labors as a pastor and church organizer, Marpeck made other important contributions to the Anabaptists, the chief of which flowed from his pen. Marpeck debated with Martin Bucer and Kaspar Schwenkfeld, but also attacked the incarnation view of Melchior Hoffman, the Münsterite use of force, and the Hutterian community of goods. He held both the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, but distinguished the New Testament as the authoritative rule of faith and practice for Christian brethren. Marpeck attributed the German Peasants' War, the Münster Rebellion, Ulrich Zwingli's death, and many of the excesses of the Catholic Church to the failure to make this distinction. Pilgram held a moderate position among Anabaptists, criticizing the positions of both the legalists and the spiritualists. His writings include the Vermanung (a revision of Rothmann's Bekentnisse), the Verantwortung (a reply to Schwenkfeld), and the Testamentserläuterung. William Estep suggests that Marpeck was to South German Anabaptism what Menno Simons was to Dutch Anabaptism.
Pilgram Marpeck married Sophia Harrer, by whom he had one child. After her death, he married a woman named Anna. They had no offspring, but adopted three children.
Because of his zeal for defending Anabaptism wherever he went by debating and writing, Marpeck was considered an effective teacher by followers and a formidable heretic by opponents. He was similar in a few ways to Hans Denck in his views of following the leading of the Holy Spirit, and he warned others against the legalistic standards others were imposing on baptism, communion, church discipline, and dress codes. At first Marpeck had embraced Lutheranism, but he turned to Anabaptism after realizing the easy justification Luther's theology gave to carnal freedom. He, in contrast with Denck, believed the Holy Scriptures set forth the standards for Christians which included establishing the institution of the church. In accordance with this, Marpeck's theology taught the freedom of Christ and not focusing on outward legalism. [1]
Interest in Marpeck's life and thought have seen a major revival in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The discovery of the Kunstbuch, a collection of works by Marpeck and his circle, has contributed to this revival. Full-length monographs have considered his hermeneutics (William Klassen), his social thought (Stephen Boyd), his Christology (Neal Blough), and his theological method (Malcolm Yarnell).
Anabaptism is a Christian movement which traces its origins to the Radical Reformation.
Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest from the Friesland region of the Low Countries who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and became an influential Anabaptist religious leader. Simons was a contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and it is from his name that his followers became known as Mennonites.
Jakob Hutter was a Tyrolean Anabaptist leader and founder of the Hutterites.
The Mennonite Church in the Netherlands, or Algemene Doopsgezinde Sociëteit, is a body of Mennonite Christians in the Netherlands. The Mennonites are named for Menno Simons (1496–1561), a Dutch Roman Catholic priest from the Province of Friesland who converted to Anabaptism around 1536. He was re-baptized as an adult in 1537 and became part of the Dutch Anabaptist movement.
The Swiss Mennonite Conference is an Anabaptist Christian body in Switzerland.
Anabaptist theology, also known as Anabaptist doctrine, is a theological tradition reflecting the doctrine of the Anabaptist Churches. The major branches of Anabaptist Christianity agree on core doctrines but have nuances in practice. While the adherence to doctrine is important in Anabaptist Christianity, living righteously is stressed to a greater degree.
Balthasar Hubmaier was an influential German Anabaptist leader. He was one of the most well-known and respected Anabaptist theologians of the Reformation.
Jörg vom Haus Jacob, commonly known as George Blaurock, was an Anabaptist leader and evangelist. Along with Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz, he was a co-founder of the Swiss Brethren in Zürich, and thereby one of the founders of Anabaptism.
BernhardRothmann was a 16th-century radical and Anabaptist leader in the city of Münster. He was born in Stadtlohn, Westphalia, around 1495.
Ludwig Haetzer was an Anabaptist.
David Joris was an important Anabaptist leader in the Netherlands before 1540.
Obbe Philips was one of the early founders of Dutch Anabaptism. He was the illegitimate son of a Roman Catholic priest from Leeuwarden. Philips studied medicine, and became a barber and a surgeon. He married in 1530 and set up his business in Leeuwarden.
The Radical Reformation represented a response to corruption both in the Catholic Church and in the expanding Magisterial Protestant movement led by Martin Luther and many others. Beginning in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th century, the Radical Reformation gave birth to many radical Protestant groups throughout Europe. The term covers radical reformers like Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Karlstadt, the Zwickau prophets, and Anabaptist groups like the Hutterites and the Mennonites.
Leonhard Schiemer was an early pacifist Anabaptist writer and martyr whose work survives in the Ausbund.
Hans Hut was a very active Anabaptist in southern Germany and Austria.
Hans Denck was a German theologian and Anabaptist leader during the Reformation.
The Martyrs' Synod took place in Augsburg, Germany, from 20 to 24 August 1527. The purpose of this meeting, attended by about sixty representatives from different Anabaptist groups, was to come to agreement over the differences related to the central Anabaptist teachings among the Swiss and south German Anabaptists.
The Swiss Brethren are a branch of Anabaptism that started in Zürich, spread to nearby cities and towns, and then was exported to neighboring countries. Today's Swiss Mennonite Conference can be traced to the Swiss Brethren.
Wilhelm Reublin was a leading figure of the Swiss Brethren movement. Reublin was born in 1484 in Rottenburg am Neckar. In 1521, after studying theology in Freiburg and Tübingen, Reublin became the pastor at St. Alban in Basel and began to advocate reform. St. Alban was soon the center of the evangelical movement in Basel. In the Fall of 1522 Reublin was expelled from the city for his Reformation sermons and moved to Witikon in 1524, where he became the local pastor and preached against infant baptism. Reublin was with Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz in Zürich in January 1525 at the birth of the Anabaptist movement. Reublin took part in a disputation on 17 January 1525 after which Grebel, Mantz and Reublin were given eight days to leave the canton.
Neo-Anabaptism is a Christian theological movement in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century inspired by classical Anabaptism. According to Stuart Murray, neo-Anabaptists "identify with the Anabaptist tradition and are happy to be known as Anabaptists, but have no historic or cultural links with any Anabaptist-related denomination".
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