Few figures of the Reformation lived so winding a path as Balthasar Hubmaier: doctor of theology, respected Catholic preacher, then one of the earliest and most widely read theologians of believer’s baptism, until he was burned at the stake for that same conviction. His story shows how an honest search for biblical truth can cost everything.
Born around 1480 in Friedberg, Bavaria, Hubmaier earned his doctorate in theology at the University of Ingolstadt in 1512 under his teacher Johann Eck, and rose to become the university’s vice-rector. In 1516 he took the pulpit of Regensburg Cathedral, where he gained fame as a preacher.
During this Catholic period, Hubmaier bears a serious stain: in 1519 he helped lead the expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg and the destruction of the city’s synagogue, raising in its place a Marian shrine that drew pilgrims. It is an episode history records without mincing words.
Still in 1524, before becoming an Anabaptist, he wrote “On Heretics and Those Who Burn Them,” one of the earliest texts of the Reformation to argue that faith cannot be imposed by fire or sword, only by patience and instruction.
In 1523, in a meeting with Zwingli in Zurich, Hubmaier resolved to ground his faith on Scripture alone, and began questioning infant baptism. Already parish priest in Waldshut since 1521, in April 1525 he received believer’s baptism at the hands of Wilhelm Reublin, followed by more than three hundred parishioners.
In July 1525, still in Waldshut, he wrote the treatise On the Christian Baptism of Believers, the most complete defense of Anabaptist baptismal theology. Imprisoned in Zurich in late 1525, Hubmaier was tortured on the rack until he signed a public recantation. The episode tormented him: in his Brief Apology of 1526 he wrote that he could err, being a man, but could not be a heretic, asking God’s forgiveness for his weakness.
A refugee in Nikolsburg, Moravia, he lived his most fruitful years: he wrote the first Anabaptist catechism and treatises on the freedom of the will and on the sword, moderating the movement against radical pacifist currents.
Captured by the Austrian authorities, he was burned at the stake in a public square in Vienna on March 10, 1528. Three days later, his wife, Elisabeth Hügeline, was drowned in the Danube River. His steadfastness under persecution still speaks to churches that today face hostility for their faith.
