Background
Menno Simons was born in 1496 in Witmarsum, Friesland, Netherland. Very little is known concerning his childhood and family except that he grew up in a poor peasant environment.
(Menno Simons (1496 31 January 1561) was an Anabaptist r...)
Menno Simons (1496 31 January 1561) was an Anabaptist religious leader from the Friesland region of the Low Countries. Simons was a contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and his followers became known as Mennonites.
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Menno Simons was born in 1496 in Witmarsum, Friesland, Netherland. Very little is known concerning his childhood and family except that he grew up in a poor peasant environment.
Simons learned Latin and some Greek, and he was taught about the Latin Church Fathers during his training to become a priest. He had never read the Bible, either before or during his training for the priesthood, out of fear that he would be adversely influenced by it. When he later reflected upon this period in his life, he called himself stupid.
He was not a man of learning, nor had he many books; for his knowledge of early Christian writers he was partly indebted to the Chronica or compilations of Sebastian Franck.
At the age of twenty-four he entered the priesthood, becoming one of two curates under the incumbent of Pingjum, a village near his birthplace.
Hence he began to study the New Testament.
The question as to the right age for baptism came up; he found this an open matter in the early church.
Then the execution, in March, 1531, at Leeuwarden, of the tailor Sicke Freerks, who had been rebaptized in the previous December at Emden, introduced further questions.
Menno was not satisfied with the inconsistent answers which he got from Luther, Bucer and Bullinger; he resolved to rely on Scripture alone, and front this time describes his preaching as evangelical, not sacramental.
Anabaptism of the Munster typerepelled him.
Accordingly in January, 1536, he left the Roman communion.
There were now among the so-called Anabaptists four parties, the favourers of the Munster faction, the Baten- burgers, extremists, the Melchiorites and the Obbenites.
For a time Menno remained aloof from both Melchior Hofman and Obbe Philipsz.
In fact, Obbe left the body and is stigmatized as its Demas.
His Christology was in the main orthodox, though he rejected terms (such as Trinity) which he could not find in Scripture, and held a Valentinian doctrine of the celestial origin of the flesh of Christ.
His church discipline was drawn from the Swiss Baptists.
Menno's writings in Plattdeutsch, printed at various places, are numerous, with much sameness, and what an unfriendly critic would call wool-gathering; through them shines a character attractive by the sincerity of its simple and warm spirituality, the secret of Menno's influence.
(Menno Simons (1496 31 January 1561) was an Anabaptist r...)
Nothing is known of his early background, except that he decided to become a Catholic priest and was consequently ordained in March 1524.
Influenced by the writings of the Protestant reformers, especially Martin Luther, and by his own reading of the Bible, he finally decided in 1536 to renounce the Catholic Church and to be baptized as an Anabaptist.
His constant activity made possible the survival and spread of the original, peaceful Anabaptist movement when it was most threatened by persecution. During all of his missionary activity, Menno also wrote numerous pamphlets and books explaining the Anabaptist doctrines.
He was married to a woman named Gertrude, and they had at least three children, two daughters and a son.