Balthasar Hubmaier
1480-1528
German Anabaptist. Hubmaier was born of poor parents in
Augsburg, Germany. Although little is known of his early
life, he became an unusual student, receiving a master's de-
gree in 1511 from the University of Freiburg, and a doctor of
theology degree from the University of Ingolstadt two years
later, where he became professor of theology. Soon his fame
as a pulpit orator grew, and he was called to Regensburg as
chief pastor in the cathedral.
During these years, a great change in his religious
convictions was taking place as a result of his study of the
Scriptures. There is no record of the date of his conversion.
However, in the year 1522, he began to openly preach that the
Roman Catholic Church had departed from the doctrines and
practices of the Scriptures. He made a trip to Switzerland,
where he visited Erasmus and Zwingli, and, soon after, em-
braced Protestant theology. In the spring of 1525, he began
baptizing by immersion the converts that resulted from his
preaching and traveling over central and western Europe.
He was continually in danger, and various authori-
ties, religious and political, were constantly after him. In
1526, he fled to Moravia, where, as the result of his minis-
try, 6,000 converts were baptized in one year. He was the au-
thor of many articles and pamphlets condemning and criticiz-
ing Rome. In 1528 Catholic authorities arrested him in Vienna
and soon condemned him as a heretic and burned him at the
stake. His faithful wife, who encouraged him to remain true
to the Word of God, was drowned in the Danube River eight
days later.
Ruckman '67

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Christian Biographies