The Radical Reformation: the Anabaptists

The great religious Reformation movement of the 16th century saw the emergence of radical movements. Some wanted a total separation between the religious and the temporal. They campaigned for the abolition of infant baptism and defended a literal approach to biblical texts. These are the Anabaptists. They suffered violent persecution. Some took refuge in the then sparsely fertile lands of today's Bernese Jura.