Our Ancestors' Books Were Banned And Burned

Benuel S. Blank, a member of an Old Order 
Amish congregation in Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, published this book, now in its 
eighth printing, in 2009, the year he died at
age 76. 

I doubt if any of the 53 Anabaptist authors of the hymns included in the first edition of the 1563 "Ausbund" were actually my biological kin, but 51 of the songs they composed during their five years of imprisonment in the infamous Swiss Passau prison are still a part of the ancient hymnal used by members of the Amish community of my birth.

The 1525 Anabaptist (Weidertaufer, or rebaptizer) movement that gave birth to Mennonite, Hutterite and Amish groups promoted church membership by free choice rather than by an infant baptism that registered everyone as a citizen of the state as well as a member of the state church. Its very first adherents were originally members of Ulrich Zwingli's Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation, but the movement spread rapidly to Lutheran and Catholic controlled jurisdictions all over western Europe. 

Fearing anarchy if people were allowed religious freedom, state church officials were swift in their renunciation of the movement and charged Anabaptists with sedition and heresy punishable by death. Thousands had their property confiscated and their rights of citizenship denied, and many were banished, drowned and burned at the stake for what were considered radical and dangerous beliefs.

Not surprisingly, the expanding collection of hymns included in numerous editions of the Ausbund hymnal, along with copies of their Schleitheim Confession of Faith and writings by church leaders like Michael Sattler, Pilgrim Marpeck and Menno Simons, were banned and burned, and anyone possessing copies of unauthorized religious material was subject to severe punishment. Benual Blank, in his book The Amazing Story of the Ausbund, writes, "There are instances known of finding Anabaptist books many years later in the walls and ceilings and under the floorboards of European homes at one time owned by Anabaptists."

Religious freedom for all can never be taken for granted, and has been gained not so much by the power of the sword as by the blood of martyrs. 

For more on Mennonite hymnody: 

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2018/08/from-anabaptist-ausbund-to.html