Christian History 1600 to 1699

1620

John Robinson (1575 – 1625) was the pastor of the "Pilgrim Fathers" before they left on the Mayflower. He became one of the early leaders of the English Separatists, minister of the Pilgrims, and is regarded (along with Robert Browne) as one of the founders of the Congregational Church. [33] (67) [T]he Puritan minister John Robinson had complained to Plymouth's William Bradford that although a group of massacred Indians no doubt "deserved" to be killed, "Oh, how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you killed any!" [20] (68 p. 374)

And kill them they did... At the mission of Nuestra Sentora de Loreto, reported the Franciscan chronicler Father Francisco Palone, during the first three years of Franciscan rule 76 children and adults were baptized, while 131 were buried... The same held true at others, from the mission of Santa Rosalin¡ de Mulegne, with 48 baptisms and 113 deaths, to the mission of San Ignacio, with 115 baptisms and 293 deaths - all within the same initial three year period. (46)

1624

In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenseless Indian men, women and children. [SH107] (45 p. 107) Peasants' War, 1524–26, rising of the German peasants and the poorer classes of the towns, particularly in Franconia, Swabia, and Thuringia. It was the climax of a series of local revolts that dated from the 15th cent. Although most of the peasants' demands were economic or political rather than religious, the Reformation sparked the explosion. When the peasants heard the church attacked by Martin Luther and other reformers and listened to traveling preachers expound such doctrines as the priesthood of all believers, they concluded that their cause had divine support and that their grievances would be redressed. At Stühlingen, near the Swiss border, a revolt broke out in 1524. The peasants of Swabia and Franconia organized armies, and within a year the war spread over W and S Germany. Aid was given by some discontented nobles, such as Florian Geyer, Götz von Berlichingen, and Ulrich I, dispossessed duke of Württemberg, as well as by large numbers of townsmen. A program called the Twelve Articles of the Peasantry listed among the demands liberty to choose their own pastors, relief from the lesser tithes, abolition of serfdom, the right to fish and hunt, restoration of in closed common lands, abolition of death duties, impartiality of the courts, and restriction of the demands of landlords to their just feudal dues. These articles were modified variously to suit local conditions. Some atrocities by the peasants (e.g., the massacre of Weinsberg) marked the war, but those committed by their enemies were worse. The revolt received the blessing of the Swiss reformer Huldreich Zwingli and in Thuringia was led by the radical Anabaptist leader Thomas Münzer. Martin Luther, however, condemned the revolt, thus contributing to its eventual defeat. Lacking unity and firm leadership, the peasant forces were crushed (1525) largely by the army of the Swabian League. It is estimated that 100,000 peasants were killed. [47] (69)

In the treatise Luther arraigned the peasants on three charges: (1) they had violated their oaths of loyalty to their rulers and were therefore subject to temporal punishment; (2) they had robbed, plundered, and murdered, and were subject to death in body and soul; and (3) they had committed their crimes under the cover of Christ’s name, thereby shamefully blaspheming God. The peasants were like a mad dog which had to be destroyed. The government, he argued, must use its God given office to subdue the rebels with force, the only language they understood. Who¬ever lost his life in suppressing this rebellion, Luther argues, would be a martyr to the gospel.[48] (70)