HUBMAIER, BALTHASAR

born 1485, Friedberg, near Augsburg, Bavaria died March 10, 1528, Vienna early German Reformation figure and one of the foremost leaders of the Anabaptists, who advocated adult baptism. Hubmaier was named doctor of theology after studies at the German universities at Freiburg and Ingolstadt, and he was appointed cathedral preacher at Regensburg in 1516. In 1521 he arrived in Switzerland, where he soon became a leader of the fledgling Anabaptists, generally viewed as the most prominent movement of the radical Protestant Reformation. Persecuted even by the liberal Zwinglians for his beliefs, he was arrested in 1525 at Zrich, where he made an enforced recantation. Subsequently, however, he resumed his Anabaptist proselytizing, first in Augsburg and later in Nikolsburg, Moravia (now Mikulov, Czech Republic). Hubmaier was especially influential through his writings and represented the more moderate strain of the movement, in contrast to the millenarian anarchism of Thomas Mntzer and Hans Hut, radical leaders who tried to aid the coming of the millennium, the 1,000-year reign of Christ and his elect. Constantly hunted by imperial authorities, Hubmaier was ultimately captured and burned at the stake as a heretic at Vienna.