Gabrieler

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The Gabrieler (also Gabrielites ) were a group named after Gabriel Ascherham within the radical Reformation Anabaptist movement in Moravia and Silesia .

history

Gabriel Ascherham founded the first Anabaptist congregations in 1527, among others in Glogau , Breslau and Glatz . However, after the persecution of the still young Silesian Anabaptist movement began in 1528, many Gabriel Anabaptists emigrated from Silesia to the Moravian Rossitz (Czech: Rosice ) and established a larger Bruderhof there in 1529 . Until the establishment of their own Bruderhof in nearby Auspitz , the Philippians from south-west Germany also settled in Rossitz. There were also contacts with the Anabaptist community that had moved from Austerlitz to Auspitz and later named itself after Jakob Hutter Hutterer . In 1531 these three Anabaptist groups living in communion formed a loose union with a total of around 4000 parishioners. At a meeting between the leaders of the three Anabaptist groups in October 1533, however, a falling out occurred, which led to the Hutterites, Gabriels and Philippians developing as independent Anabaptist denominations in the following years. After being expelled from their farm in Rossitz in 1535, a large part of the community moved back to Silesia, where they were accepted in, among others, Rauden and Wohlau . Others emigrated to Poland and Prussia , where they later probably joined the Mennonites of the Kulmer , Schwetzer and Graudenzer lowlands. However, many stayed behind in Moravia in small groups and, after the persecution subsided, established new homes in, among others, Bukowitz and Bisenz .

Ascherham himself wrote some heavily polemical writings against the Hutterites. In 1544 his main work was finally written with the title Difference between divine and human wisdom .

After Gabriel Ascherham's death in 1545, a large part of the Gabriel people joined the Hutterites. A part of the Silesian Gabrieler seems to have joined the Schwenkfeldians . In the Moravian towns of Kreutz bei Göding , Znaim and Eibenschütz alone, independent Gabriele communities existed for a few years. In the latter place, a meeting with representatives of the Bohemian Brethren took place in 1559 about a possible union of the two churches, but this failed due to a dispute over baptism. In 1565 the last three remaining Gabriel communities joined the Hutterites.

Together with the Philippians , the Sabbathers , the Nikolsburg Anabaptists who were influenced by Balthasar Hubmaier and the Austerlitzer Brothers who belong to the Marpeck circle , they provide an example of the plurality of the early Moravian Anabaptist movement. They show how, in addition to the Hutterites, other Anabaptist community movements were able to develop in Moravia in the first half of the 16th century.

literature

  • Christian Hege : Ascherham . In: Mennonite Lexicon . tape 1 . Frankfurt / M. and Weierhof (Pfalz) 1913, p. 87-88 .
  • Werner O. Packull : Die Gabrieler , in: ders .: Die Hutterer in Tirol; Early Anabaptism in Switzerland, Tyrol and Moravia , Universitätsverlag Wagner, Innsbruck, 2000, ISBN 3-7030-0351-0 , Chapter 5, pp. 121–155, Chapter 12, pp. 327–342, and p. 352 (Places and community leaders)

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