determine which account is true; but what seems to be beyond question is that his dead or moribund body was hastily taken into court and ordered to be burned; and at sound of the alarum-bell, his body was carried to the gibbet beyond the walls, and there burnt to ashes.[1]
Widemann, as the less dangerous man of the two, seems not to have been imprisoned or otherwise troubled. He continued to lead the party opposed to Hübmaier, and, in spite of the latter's opposition, the sentiment in favour of community of goods continued to grow in Nikolsburg, and ultimately this led to the division of the church and the emigration of the communistic element, but not during Hübmaier's lifetime. A more immediate result was the composition and printing of the treatise On the Sword, in which Hübmaier set forth his ideas on civil government with the utmost clearness, fulness, and frankness.
This was the last, and in some respects the most important, of his Nikolsburg pamphlets. It is a less ambitious performance than his two treatises
- ↑ Newman, in his History of Anti-Pedobaptism, says December 7, 1527, but the Anabaptist chronicles make the year 1529. Beck, Geschichts-Bücher, p. 34, cf. p. 50.
