David Joris and Dutch Anabaptism, 1524-1543 By Gary K. Waite, and: The Anabaptist Writings of David Joris, 1535-1543 Translated and edited by Gary K. Waite (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 445 than its predecessors. This was due to the somewhat narrow and repetitious focus of so many of its letters. They lacked the variety and range of those gathered in the earlier volumes. It was indeed an unhappy year, and we might note that even Erasmus' scholarly productivity during this time was meager. This is not the whole story of the volume, however. There are some other letters of importance in it, and the whole, to be sure, is a contribution to a broader understanding of the great humanist and his times. We can certainly be grateful for it. John C. Oun Fordham University, Emeritus Davidjoris andDutchAnabaptism, 1524-1543. By Gary K. Waite. (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 1990. Pp. xi, 235. US »32.50; Can.»27.95.) The Anabaptist Writings of DavidJoris, 1535-1543- Translated and edited by Gary K. Waite. [Classics of the Radical Reformation, Volume 7.] (Scottdale , Pennsylvania: Herald Press. 1993. Pp. 345. »3995.) With Waite's biography and his recently published anthology, English-language literature on David Joris has at last reached a presentable standard. To get a historical perspective on Joris, an important sixteenth-century Dutch sect leader, a tactic was needed to avoid becoming lost in the labyrinth of his 240 printed works—most of them written in obscure "spiritual language" for the edification ofhis followers. Roland Bainton did not penetrate far beyond the colorful anticlimax of Joris' career, the years of disguise and comfortable exile in Basel. This is indicated by his characterization ofJoris—"the heretic as hypocrite." The foundations for contemporary study of the Davidite movement were laid in 1983 with the appearance of Samme Zijlstra's monograph on Nicholaas Blesdijk, Joris' spokesman and son-in-law. A student of the religious socialist historian, A. F. Mellink, Zijlstra followed him in asserting that the Mennonites were not very important in Dutch Anabaptism before the 1540's, and that the leader who picked up the pieces after the fall of the Münster kingdom in 1535 was not Menno Simons but DavidJoris. David does, indeed, seem to have been the most prominent Anabaptist leader in Holland from 1535 until 1539, when persecution led him to seek refuge in Antwerp. Zijlstra's research uncovered a number of important writings ofJoris and the Davidites, hitherto thought not to have survived the sixteenth century. Waite followed Mellink and Zijlstra in abandoning the Mennonite norm for study of early Dutch Anabaptism, and has encountered criticism from some evangelical historians for not taking a more "original" position over against Zijlstra. Scholarship is a co-operative enterprise, and, in this reviewer's opinion, to have abandoned Zijlstra's findings would have been perverse. 446 BOOK REVIEWS Following Zijlstra's book on Blesdijk, the ground was cleared for a modern biography ofJoris. Waiv: produced it in 1990; there is nothing better in any language. A bit more than halfof this biography, and its most valuable chapters, are devoted to Joris' years as an Anabaptist leader in Holland, 1535-1539· Waite shows Joris to have been a typical Dutch sect leader in the tradition of Melchior Hoffman, dominated by his proclamation of the looming apocalypse , obsessed by his own charismatic authority, and convinced that the Holy Spirit had raised him above mere biblical literalism. Although the Davidites did baptize adults, exercise church discipline, and organize congregations in the late 1530's, like other Melchiorites they oscillated between Anabaptism and Spiritualism. In later years Joris became entirely Spiritualist, rather like Sebastian Franck, 1SVhO influenced him. The selections which Waite translates in his anthology of 1993 are those unusual writings of David Joris which provide historical information about him and his sect. Except for the last, the Apology to Countess Anna o/Oldenburg , all of these writings either relate to, or were composed in, the late 1530's. They are the major sources for Waite's biography, and prior to the publication of his anthology most of them were not accessible in modern editions. For example, the anonymous biography (possibly a lightly disguised autobiography) ofJoris was published previously only in a book ofdie German Pietist Gottfried Arnold from the early eighteenth century. The Response to Johannes Eisenburg (1537) and the Blessed...