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 baptism; with Osiander’s adherents in the matter of justification; with his colleague, Nicholas von Amsdorf, to whom he had resigned the Eisenach superintendency; with Flacius Illyricus, and others. He lost favour with Duke John Frederic of Saxony, fell into bad health, was deposed (1555) from his offices, and was disappointed in his hopes of being reinstated after the colloquy at Eisenach (1556). He died at Leipzig on the 11th of August 1558. He was twice married, and had several sons, of whom Eusebius held a chair of philosophy at Wittenberg, and married Melanchthon’s grand-daughter, Anna Sabinus. Schmidt gives a full bibliography of the numerous writings of Menius, who translated several of Luther’s biblical commentaries into German. His Oeconomia was reprinted in 1855.

MENKEN, ADAH ISAACS (1835–1868), American actress, was born in New Orleans, the daughter of a Spanish Jew, her name being Dolores Adios Fuertes. Left in poverty at the age of thirteen, she made her first appearance as a dancer in her native city. She had a great success there and in other southern cities, including Havana, and she afterwards aspired to act in serious parts. In 1856 she married John Isaacs Menken, translated Adios to Adah, and thus took the name she thereafter bore through various matrimonial ventures. In 1864 she appeared at Astley’s in London as Mazeppa, a performance of an athletic dramatic type suited to her fine physique. In England and France she became intimate with many literary men—Swinburne, Charles Reade, Dickens (to whom she dedicated in 1868 a volume of verse, Infelicia), Gautier and Dumas the elder. Paris saw her for a hundred nights in Les Pirates de la Savane, and she also played in Vienna and again in London. She died in Paris on the 10th of August 1868.

MENNONITES, a body of religionists who take their name from Menno Simons (see ), the most valued exponent of their principles. They maintain a form of Christianity which, discarding the sacerdotal idea, owns no authority outside the Bible and the enlightened conscience, limits baptism to the believer, and lays stress on those precepts which vindicate the sanctity of human life and of a man’s word. The place of origin of the views afterwards called Mennonite (see ) was Zürich, where in 1523 a small community left the state church and (from Jan. 18, 1525) adopted the tenet of believers’ baptism. Unlike other Reformers, they denied at once the Christian character of the existing church and of the civil authority, though, in common with the first Christians, it was their duty to obey all lawful requirements of an alien power. By Protestants as much as by Catholics this position was not unnaturally regarded as subversive of the established foundations of society. Hence the bitter persecutions which, when the safety of toleration was not imagined, made martyrs of these humble folk, who simply wished to cultivate the religious life apart from the world. There was something in this ideal which answered to that medieval conception of separation from the world which had leavened all middle-class society in Europe; and the revolt from Rome had prepared many minds to accept the further idea of separation from the church, for the pursuit of holiness in a society pledged to primitive discipline. Hence the new teaching and praxis spread rapidly from Switzerland to Germany, Holland and France. While the horrors of the Münster fanaticism, which culminated in 1534, made Anabaptism a byword, and increased the severity of a persecution directed against all Baptists indiscriminately, the reaction against the fatal errors of the Münster experiment increased also the adherents of communities which discarded the sword; thus Menno was brought into their ranks. Each community was independent, united with others only by the bond of love. There was no hierarchy (as with the Familists), but “exhorters” chosen by the members, among them “elders” for administering baptism and the Lord’s Supper; an arrangement so readily renewed that the sure way of putting down such a body was the execution of all its constituents, often by drowning, an appropriate end, according to Zwingli’s quip. The remnant of the Swiss Mennonites (not tolerated till 1710) broke in 1620 into two parties, the Uplanders (or Amish, from their leader Jacob Amen) holding against the Lowlanders that excommunication of husband or wife dissolved marriage, and that razors and buttons were unlawful. In Holland the Mennonites have always been numerous. An offshoot from them at Rhijnsburg in 1619, founded by the four brothers, farmers, Van der Kodde, and named Collegianten from their meetings, termed collegia (thus, as not churches, escaping the penal laws), has been compared to the Plymouth Brethren, but differed in so far as they required no conformity of religious opinion, and recognized no office of teacher. With them, as Martineau notes, Spinoza had “an intense fellow-feeling.” Later, the exiled Socinians from Poland (1660) were in many cases received into membership. There had previously been overtures, more than once, for union with Mennonites on the part of Polish Socinians, who agreed with them in the rejection of oaths, the refusal to take human life, the consequent abstinence from military service and magisterial office, and in the Biblical basis of doctrine; differences of doctrinal interpretation precluded any fusion. In Holland the Mennonites were exempted from military service in 1575, from oath-taking in 1585, from public office in 1617. In Zeeland exemption from military service and oaths was granted in 1577; afterwards, as in Friesland, a heavy poll tax was the price of exemption from military service; but since 1795 they have enjoyed a legal exemption from oath-taking. In France the Mennonites of the Vosges were exempted from military service in 1793, an exemption confirmed by Napoleon, who employed them in hospital service on his campaigns. That he did not exempt the Dutch Mennonites is due to the fact that “they had ceased to present a united front of resistance to military claims” (Martineau); in fact they sent a large band of volunteers to Waterloo (Barclay). While in Germany the Mennonites exist in considerable numbers, more important are the German Mennonite colonies in southern Russia, brought there in 1786 by Catherine II., and freed, by the grant of complete religious liberty, from the hardships imposed by Prussian military law. These colonies have sent many emigrants to America, where their oldest community was settled (1683) at Germantown, Pennsylvania. Their settlement in Canada dates from 1786. Among the American Mennonites there are three sections, and a progressive party, known as New School Mennonites.

MENNO SIMONS (1492–1559), religious leader, was born in 1492 at Witmarsum in Friesland. Of his parentage (apart from his patronymic) and education nothing is known. He was not a man of learning, nor had he many books; for his knowledge of early Christian writers he was partly indebted to the Chronica or compilations of Sebastian Franck. At the age of twenty-four he entered the priesthood, becoming one of two curates under the incumbent of Pingjum, a village near his birthplace. He accused himself, with the other clergy, of lax and self-indulgent living. Doubts about transubstantiation made him uneasy; some of Luther’s tracts fell in his way, and he was comforted by Luther’s dictum that salvation does not depend on human dogmata. Hence he began to study the New Testament. The question as to the right age for baptism came up; he found this an open matter in the early church. Then the execution, in March 1531, at Leeuwarden, of the tailor Sicke Freerks, who had been rebaptized in the previous December at Emden, introduced further questions. Menno was not satisfied with the inconsistent answers which he got from Luther, Bucer and Bullinger; he resolved to rely on Scripture alone, and from this time describes his preaching as evangelical, not sacramental. In 1532 he exchanged his curacy for a living at Witmarsum, in response to a popular call. Anabaptism of the Münster type