ana3

See anna1. ana-. [L. ana-, baptize: see anabaptism.] One who believes Christians who hold baptism in infancy to be invalid, and require adults who have received it to be baptized on joining their communion. The name is best known historically as applied to the followers of Thomas Münzer, a leader of the peasants' war in Germany, who was killed in battle in 1525, and to those of John Matthias and John Bockold, or John of Leyden, who committed great exce es while attempting to establish a socialistic kingdom of New Zion or Mount Zion at Münster in Westphalia, and were defeated in 1535, their leaders being killed and hung up in iron cages, which are still preserved in that city. The name has also been applied to bodies of very different character in other respects, probably always in an opprobrious sense, since believers in the sole validity of adult baptism refuse to regard it as rebaptism in the case of persons who had received the rite in infancy. It is now most frequently used of the Mennon ites. See Men no nite. IMG:content-0678.png:[blocks in formation] anabaptist i cal (an"a-bap-tis'ti-kal), a. Same as anabaptistic.