From time to time I want to share with you stories about Christians who lived after the time of the Bible who can both teach us and encourage us to live more faithfully ourselves. And in each case I want to show how their lives embody specific aspects of faithfulness from the Scriptures.
The first one I shared with you was the story of the young woman, Perpetua, who lived in Carthage Africa in the early 200’s. Today we jump all the way to the early 1500’s and we are in Switerland. So this was around 500 years ago. This is the story of Felix Mantz (or Manz). We begin with his –
His life in Zurich
Zurich with the Limmat river in the foreground and the Grossmunster in the background
He was born here in 1498. He was the illegitimate child of a priest at the main church in Zurich, the Grossmunster. It was not uncommon at this time for priests to have concubines.
He was in his early 20’s when the Protestant reformation began to gain a foothold in Zurich. And he became very involved in it, working with the Protestant leaders and attending bible studies.
He had studied at the University of Paris and knew Latin and Greek, and he learned Hebrew at this time. He was on his way to being appointed as a scholar and teacher of Hebrew in what would become the University of Zurich.
A reform of the Protestant reformation?
But he, along with several others, became disillusioned with the Protestant leaders of Zurich. Although they talked about having a church based on the New Testament, they constantly allowed the city council to determine what, if anything, would change in the church of Zurich. The State, even though made up in part of unbelievers, was in charge of the church and its reformation.
The first public break between Mantz and these leaders came in October 1523 when the city council called for a debate about the Lord’s Supper, or when to change from a Catholic service to a Protestant one.
City council building
City council building in the 1500s
Mantz argued that when you know what is right based on the Bible, you need to act on it, not wait. The Protestant leaders deferred to the conservative city council and decided to wait to make a change.
Mantz and the others had been meeting together in their own bible study for a while, often in his mother’s home. They went ahead and began to observe a simple Lord’s supper among themselves.
The controversy came to focus next on infant baptism. The radicals asked, where is this in the Bible? The city council called for a debate on this topic which took place on January 10 and 17, 1525. Mantz was a spokesperson for the radical group.
Now, a State church needs infant baptism to bind together everyone in one faith in their territory. Mantz and the radicals were coming to see that the church should only be made up of people who choose the Christian faith for themselves. So these are very different ideas of what the church should be.
Anabaptist and Protestant leaders in the council building
Street on which the first baptisms took place
The radicals argued that there is a pattern in Scripture, which is that faith and repentance come before baptism. The disputation, of course, was given to the Protestant leaders by the council since they worked hand in hand. But this wasn’t all.
On January 18th, the council ordered all parents to have their children baptized within a week. (One of their group had just had a daughter four days before). And on January 21st – Mantz and the others were silenced, and their meetings banned.
That very evening the group of radicals gathered at Mantz’s mother’s house and received from each other believer’s baptism, thus starting a new Christian group.
Life as a persecuted evangelist
First Anabaptist church site
The next day the group fled to the village of Zollikon, just south of Zurich. And they began preaching and baptizing people. Mantz baptized a farmer named George Shad, who himself later went on to baptize 40 more people. Things really took off and people began to respond.
Also in Zollikon, Mantz baptized Hans Bruggbach. An account of this said that after a Bible study, Hans “stood up, wept and wailed what a great sinner he was and asked those present to pray for him.” After he confessed his faith, Mantz baptized him. Right after this another man, Jacob Hottinger stood up and asked to be baptized and Mantz baptized him. This became the first Anabaptist congregation.
An Anabaptist prison break
Within a week the authorities cracked down. Mantz was arrested along with many others. He was put in prison on a diet of mush, water and bread until he had a change of heart. But he escaped from prison and went to other areas outside of Zurich to minister. He was arrested again in July and was in jail for 3 months. But then he was released and began to preach and baptize again.
Once again he was arrested and brought to Zurich. As a prisoner at this time he took part in one final debate, November 6-8 in the Grossmunster. Almost a thousand people came.
Debate in the Grossmunster
After this he was sentenced to life in prison, and isolated from outsiders. In the Spring the council decreed the death penalty for anyone who baptized outside of the State church. In March (1526) he escaped through a window that was left open in the prison tower.
For the next nine months he was constantly on the run. He held secret meetings with believers in fields and forests. He taught them the Scriptures, baptized and celebrated a simple Lord’s supper.
His death
His final arrest was in December of 1526. He was sentenced to death by Zurich authorities. He was killed January 5, 1527 in the Limmat river at the age of 29.
Zurich in the 1500s
He was taken from the Wellenberg tower situated in the Limmat river (above – the bottom right corner) by boat, to the east bank by the fish market near the city council building. Here his sentence was read. Then he was taken past the council building to the slaughterhouse where he was put into a boat and taken out to a fisherman’s hut (above – the bottom left corner). As he made his way he praised God that he was about to die for the truth. A great crowd watched. And his mother encouraged him to stay true.
The martyrdom of Felix Mantz
They bound his hands over his knees with a rod to keep him immobile. His final words were, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my Spirit.” Then they pulled him off the platform and he drowned at 3:00 in the afternoon.
Area of the Limmat river where he was drowned
Finally, here are –
Several characteristics of faithfulness
– that stand out to me in Mantz’s life:
1. He worked to fulfill the great commission. Jesus said in Matthew 28:19-20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
He had an exemplary ministry of disciple making, baptizing and teaching throughout the area of Zurich. And this is a challenge to us. He did this when there were great obstacles to fulfilling the great commission of Jesus:
- at this time everyone thought that everyone in Europe was already Christian.
- he was being told that he was a heretic for simply following the New Testament.
- it was against the law of the land.
The challenge is this – in our situation where none of these obstacles exist, why aren’t we more active in fulfilling the great commission?
2. He was not afraid of persecutors. Jesus said in Matthew 10:28, “do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.” And he was fearless. He was constantly breaking the law in order to spread the word. And even when he knew near the end, that if he were caught he would die, he kept going.
This is a challenge to us – he carried out his ministry under constant threat of arrest and death. But the worst we have to fear is that we will be ridiculed and dishonored. Yet we often allow this fear to stop us.
3. He gave up his earthly life. Jesus said in John 12:25, “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
- He hated his earthly life in comparison to his love for Jesus when he was killed for his faith as a young man. He could have recanted. He could have sought a way out and changed course.
- And he hated his earthly life in comparison to his love for Jesus when he gave up comfort and status to become an evangelist on the run. He could have taken a wife and had kids and been honored as a professor and outstanding member of the Zurich community. He could have enjoyed all the comforts and privileges that Zurich has to offer in that day.But he lost his life, he gave all this up for faithfulness to God, and for a life in the world to come.
This is a challenge to us. What have we given up for Jesus? Even short of physical death, what have we hated of our life in this world; what have given up to serve Jesus? We should not think that if there were suddenly persecution in our context and our lives were on the line that we would out of the blue give up our physical lives for Jesus if we have not already been giving up our lives in service and sacrifice for Jesus more generally. If we are not taking up our cross and dying every day, we will not be prepared to literally give up our lives.
Mantz had already given everything up. He had sacrificed all for Jesus. That is why he could be joyful even as his physical death approached.
William Higgins
(I am indebted to John Allen Moore’s Anabaptist Portraits)
Christian teaching 