HUBMAIER, BALTHASAR

Anabaptist leader involved in the 16th-century Peasant War and key figure in the Moravian Anabaptist movement; b. Friedberg near Augsburg, after 1480?; d. Vienna, March 10, 1528. A priest and disciple of Johann Eck, Hubmaier followed his teacher from Freiburg to Ingolstadt (1512) where he served as professor and pastor. When called to the cathedral at Regensburg (1516), Hubmaier participated in the expulsion of the Jews and served as chaplain of the church, which replaced the razed synagogue. While pastor in Waldshut on the Rhine after 1521, Hubmaier read Luther and personally contacted Erasmus and Zwingli, supporting the latter in the Second Zurich Disputation (1523), but later joined the Anabaptist opposition. He was involved in the abortive revolt of the peasants and Waldshut against Austrian rule, and fled first to Zurich, and later to Nikolsburg, Moravia, where he led a large Anabaptist community. Arrested upon the request of the Austrian authorities, he was turned over to them and burned at the stake in Vienna. His work is distinguished from other Anabaptist writings by scholastic learning (e.g., On Free Will vs. Luther) and the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of government (e.g., On The Sword vs. absolute pacifists).

Bibliography: t. bergsten, Balthasar Hubmaier: Seine Stellung zu Reformation und Täufertum 1521–1528 (Kassel 1961). h.c. vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier, the Leader of the Anabaptists (New York 1905). g. h. williams, ed.; Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers (Philadelphia 1957); The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia 1962). f. zoepfl, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 5:503–504. r. dollinger, Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 7 v. (3d ed. Tübingen 1957–65) 3:464–465.

[g. w. forell]