ing printed in that city, repeated attempts on his part
to induce the magistrates to interfere came to nothing. Protestant works
also continued to pour from the presses. The Bible was soon translated
into Dutch, and in the course of eight years four editions of the whole
Bible and twenty-five editions of the New Testament were called for,
though the complete Scriptures had never been printed in Dutch before.

[Sidenote: October 14, 1529]

Alarmed by the spread of heresy, attributed to too great mildness, the
government now issued an edict that inaugurated a reign of terror. Death
was decreed not only for all heretics but for all who, not being
theologians, discussed articles of faith, or who caricatured God, Mary,
or the saints, and for all who failed to denounce heretics known to them.
While the government momentarily flattered itself that heresy had been
stamped out, at most it had been driven under ground. One of the effects
of the persecution was to isolate the Netherlands from the Empire
culturally and to some small extent commercially.

But heresy proved to be a veritable hydra. From one head sprang many
daughters, the Anabaptists, [Sidenote: Anabaptists] harder to deal with
than their mother. For while Lutheranism stood essentially for passive
obedience, and flourished nowhere save as a state church, Anabaptism was
frankly revolutionary and often socialistic. Melchior Hoffmann, the most
striking of their early leaders, a fervent and uneducated fanatic, driven
from place to place, wandered from Sweden and Denmark to Italy and Spain
[Sidenote: 1530-1533] preaching chiliastic and communistic ideas. Only
for three years was he much in the Netherlands, but it was there that he
won his greatest {244} successes. Appealing, as the Anabaptists always
did, to the lower classes, he converted thousands and tens of thousands
of the very poor--beggars, laborers and sailors--who passionately
embraced the teaching that promised the end of kings and governments and
the advent of the "rule of the righteous." Mary of Hungary was not far
wrong when she wrote that they planned to plunder all churches, nobles,
and wealthy merchants, in short, all who had property, and from the spoil
to distribute to every individual according to his need. [Sidenote:
October 7, 1531] A new and severer edict would have meant a general
massacre, had it been strictly enforced, but another element entered into
the situation. The city bourgeoi