Jakob Hutter

Jakob (or Jacob in English) Hutter (also Huter or Hueter) (c. 1500 – 25 February 1536), was a Tyrolean Anabaptist leader and founder of the Hutterites.

Hutter was born in the small hamlet of Moos near St. Lorenzen in the Puster Valley, in the County of Tyrol (present-day South Tyrol, Italy). He learned hat making in nearby Prags and became an itinerant craftsman. Later he settled in Spittal, Carinthia.

He probably first encountered Anabaptists in Klagenfurt and soon thereafter was converted to their belief. He began preaching in the Puster Valley region, forming several small congregations. As soon as the Habsburg authorities in Tyrol learned of these activities in early 1529, they began to persecute the Anabaptists. In 1527, the Habsburg archduke Ferdinand I of Austria had declared that seductive doctrines and heretical sects "will not be tolerated". In turn, Hutter and a few others went to investigate Moravia, because they heard the persecution was not as severe there. They visited Austerlitz, where they found the situation was indeed more tolerant and the Tyrolean Anabaptists decided to emigrate. As small groups moved to Moravia, Hutter first remained in Tyrol to pastor to those who remained. He escaped capture by the authorities because other captured Anabaptists would not reveal his whereabouts, even under severe torture.

Hutter arrived in Moravia in 1533, when the persecution of the Anabaptists in Tyrol was at its peak. Many Anabaptists from the Palatinate, Swabia and Silesia also went to Moravia. Hutter united the local Anabaptist congregations, enabling Anabaptism in Moravia to flourish. Under Hutter's leadership, several of the congregations adopted the early Christian practice of communal ownership of goods, in addition to their Anabaptist beliefs of nonviolence, and adult baptism.

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