Menno Simons

Menno Simons was a Catholic priest in Friesland who admitted he had barely opened a Bible when doubts about the Mass drove him to read one. Searching Scripture, he could find no command to baptize infants either. What finally moved him was blood: a band of Anabaptists, including his own brother, was cut down after the violent takeover of Münster in 1535 discredited the whole movement. Menno concluded that the scattered, peaceable believers who remained had no shepherd, and in 1536 he walked away from his parish to become one.

For twenty-five years he traveled the Low Countries and northern Germany with a price on his head, baptizing, writing, and arguing that Christ's people follow their Lord in suffering rather than in force. Those who gathered around his teaching were eventually called Mennonites — a name he did not choose. He died in his bed, which for an Anabaptist leader of his generation was rare.