The history of the Anabaptists starts starts with a man named Huldrych Zwingli, a one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation. Most people haven't heard of him because he is overshadowed by such giants as Luther and Calvin and because he died in a battle, giving him only about 12 in the Reformation, rather than the decades of Luther and Calvin.
Zwingli was the Roman Catholic priest in Zurich, Switzerland, and very shortly after he began work there he began to make waves, challenging fasts and the requirement that clergy stay unmarried.
In Zurich, the way for questions such as these to be solved was to have a disputation before the city council. Several of these took place during Zwingli's career, the first one having to do with the Zwingli taking Zurich formally into the Reformation by rejecting some teachings of the Catholic Church.
Somewhere around this time, a group of men interested in the works of Erasmus began translating Greek texts into German, led by Zwingli, starting out as a cultural group but soon transforming into a Bible study group which worked on translating from Erasmus' Textus Receptus. Zwingli seems to have left the group at some point.
Members of this group showed up to Zwingli's second disputation in front of the city council (along with almost a thousand other people), which had to do with images in the church and the nature of the mass. It was decided, among other things, that mass shouldn't be done the way it was being done, nor considered to be a sacrifice. When this was decided, Conrad Grebel, a member of the study group, asked how the mass should be celebrated if it was not correct the way it was at that time being conducted. Zwingli replied that the council could decide, to which another member of the study group, Simon Stumpf, retorted that it was not up to Zwingli or the city council to decide how to conduct the mass, but that the Holy Spirit had already decided and put the instructions in the Bible. He was overruled on this count by Zwingli and the council, but this is the central foundational event and doctrine of Anabaptism: the Bible is above every human authority in determining truth, belief and practice.
In accordance with this stance on the Bible, the study group pushed for faster, broader reforms in Zurich and the conflict quickly centered upon baptism. Rejecting the teaching that baptism brought one into Christianity and that it was a necessary vessel of grace for salvation, they instead taught that baptism was a symbol of one's identification with and trust in Christ and should thus be performed only after an identification with and trust in Christ was professed. In a third disputation, Zwingli attacked this idea and it was ruled that those in the group not citizens of Zurich should be banished, those who where citizens should not be allowed to meet or preach and that there should be a penalty of death for those who were not having their children baptized as infants or who were practicing adult baptism.
In blatant contradiction to this ruling, the group and others met at Felix Manz's mother's house, where, after prayer, George "Blaurock" Cajacob asked Grebel to baptize him, which Grebel did. Blaurock then was asked to baptize the rest of the group and did, marking the founding of the Anabaptist movement (on January 21, 1525).
The Anabaptist movement quickly underwent a period of intense persecution, during which most of its leaders were martyred and those who weren't martyred scattered. Catholics who caught Anabaptists generally burned them at the stake while Protestants generally drowned them as an ironic third baptism. Numerous enemies attacked the Anabaptist name as well as their bodies, associating these pacifists with apocalyptic groups such as the Zwikau Prophets. The label of "Anabaptist," which comes from the Greek for "re-baptize," was actually given to the Anabaptists as a way to justify executing them, as the label "Anabaptist" had been applied to a totally different group to which capital punishment was applied. The Anabaptists, with their first generation of leaders martyred, also sometimes were hijacked by those manifestly untrue to Anabaptism. Despite the fact that non-violence had been adopted by Anabaptists in the Schleitheim Confession almost ten years earlier, a group of apocalypse-preaching, violent polygamists who happened to practice adult baptism and were admittedly influenced by Anabaptism, became associated with Anabaptism when they took over the city of Munster for about a year and then were violently put down.
Besides the main, foundational characteristic of holding the Bible to be the ultimate authority, the early Anabaptists held the following beliefs and practices, claimed in the Schleitheim Confession:
- Believers' Baptism: Baptism is a sign and symbol only and should thus only be performed when someone has become a Christian through belief.
- The Ban: Christians should practice church discipline, which includes shunning those who refuse correction after three attempts at correction.
- Communion for Christians: Communion, as it symbolizes the unity of Christ's Body, is for unified bodies of Christians only.
- Separation: Christians should refuse to associate with those who are not Christians, as nothing good can come of associating with the World.
- Shepherds: Pastors should be of good character according to the tests laid out by Paul, and should also be awarded the privileges laid out by Paul.
- The Sword: The famous Anabaptist renouncement of violence.
- Oaths: Prohibition of oath-taking.
The Anabaptists scattered mostly west into the Netherlands, north into Germany and west into Moravia, where, eventually, new, strong leaders emerged. Those who lived in the Netherlands followed Menno Simons and became Mennonites (and Amish), those that went east followed Jacob Hutter and became Hutterites, and those that went north mostly followed Alexander Mack and became the various Schwarzeneau Brethren groups.
I hope this has been a helpful bit of history and doctrine for those interested or curious. Other good pieces of reading can be found here and here and here.
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