The Muenster incident was the culmination of the Anabaptist movement. After the catastrophe the militant section rapidly declined. It did not die out, however, until towards the end of the century. The last we hear of it was in 1574, when a formidable insurrection took place again in Westphalia, under the leadership of one Wilhelmson, the son of one of the escaped Anabaptist preachers of Muenster. The movement lasted for five years. It was finally suppressed and Wilhelmson burned alive at Cleves on March 5, 1580. Meanwhile, soon after the fall of Muenster, the party split asunder, a moderate section forming, which shortly after came under the leadership of Menno Simon. This section, which soon became the majority of the party, under the name of Mennonites, settled down into a mere religious sect. In fact, towards the end of the sixteenth century the Anabaptist communities on the continent of Europe, from Moravia on the one hand to the extreme North-west of Germany on the other, showed a tendency to develop into law-abiding and prosperous religious organizations, in many cases being officially recognized by the authorities. The Anabaptist revolt of the fourth decade of the sixteenth century, though it may be regarded partly as a continuation or recrudescence, showed some differences from the peasant revolt of some years previously. The peasant rebellion, which reached its zenith in 1525, was predominantly an agrarian movement, notwithstanding that it had had its echo among the poorer classes of the towns. The Anabaptist movement proper, which culminated in the Muenster "reign of the saints" in 1534-5, was predominantly a townsman's movement, notwithstanding that it had a considerable support from among the peasantry. The Anabaptists' leaders were not, as in the case of the Peasants' War, in the main drawn from the class of the "man that wields the hoe" (to paraphrase the phraseology of the time); they were tailors, smiths, bakers, shoemakers, or carpenters. They belonged, in short, to the class of the organized handicraftsmen and journeymen who worked within city walls. A prominent figure in both movements was, however, the ex-priest or teacher. The ideal, or, if you will, the Utopian, element in the movement of Melchior Hoffmann, Jan Matthys, and Jan Bockelson--the element which expressed the social discontent of the time in the guise of its prevalent theological conceptions--now occupied the first place, while in the earlier movement it was merely sporadic. After the close of the sixteenth century Anabaptism lost all political importance on the continent of Europe. It had, however, a certain afterglow in this country during the following century, which lasted over the times of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and may be traced in the movements of the "Levellers," the "Fifth Monarchy men," and even among the earlier Quakers. FOOTNOTES: