If you consider the communal and almost monastic lifestyle of the Amish of modern times, and the pacificism of contemporary Anabaptists some of this history may be disturbing. More familiar would be the words and descriptions of St Francis’ and his followers below.
“If we had any possessions we should need weapons and laws to defend them.” -St. Francis of Assisi
“Possessing something was the death of love for Francis. Also, Francis reasoned, what could you do to a man who owns nothing? You can’t starve a fasting man, you can’t steal from someone who has no money, you can’t ruin someone who hates prestige. They were truly free.” -Terry Matz “St. Francis of Assisi”
“other religious minorities suffered the social and economic effects of exclusion and discrimination and perhaps as a consequence turned to crime. We find this with several groups of Protestants, for example, some of whom concocted an odd mix of crime and religious dogma. This was certainly the case with a series of Anabaptist bands in the Low Countries, beginning with that of Jan van Batenburg after the failure of the Anabaptist attempt to realize the Kingdom of God at Munster in 1535. Batenburg and his associates first sought to capture another city, but then turned to armed robbery. Operating chiefly in the Dutch Overijssel province, these groups also worked in the southern Netherlands and fenced much of their loot in Antwerp. They robbed churches and monasteries stole cattle and extorted money from peasants wit hthreats of destruction of livestock and cattle. These Anabaptist bands flourished from the 1540s until the authorities captured and burned a leader in 1580 and his followers scattered. Their lengthy period of operation was the result of several factors. These were secretive bandits, with the internal discipline of communities of belief, who used signs and code words to identify each other and in later years, retreated to difficult terrain that inhibited pursuit. Their history of persecution, common family ties, and polygamy united them, as did their early belief that robberies simply appropriated the world’s goods for God’s elect and visited divine wrath on disbelievers. And as they became more robbers and less zealots in later years, their skills in their trade increased; they knew about firearms and enlisted specialists who broke down jewelry, fenced such loot, and picked locks.
Other Protestant bandits, the Wood Beggars, operated in western Flanders and northern France in the second half of the sixteenth century. The band evolved out of an anti-Catholic Protestant guerrilla movement assembled in the 1560s by local gentry in an attempt to secure the region for the reformed faith. The band’s religious fanaticism initially seemed to unify its members, but their faith soon descended into simple anti-Catholic banditry. They attacked Catholic farms and churches for money and clothes, torturing those who refused to turn over valuables and brutally mistreating their victims, like one old man whom they emasculated. – Julius Ruff “Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800” 232-233
Not only the Anabaptists but also the Calvinists partook it seems in this spiritually organized crime. In the spirit of Pascal, many have said that people never do such vile things as when they are motivated by religion. But perhaps the opposite is also true. Perhaps people never do such good as when motivated by religion -as is the case of the Franciscans and later Anabaptists.