Baptism – Adults only, please...or not

Back at the very beginning of my Haban discoveries, the historical item that first caught my attention was the journal entry regarding infant baptism.* Up until this point in Hutterite life, babies were not baptized. They may have been blessed or dedicated or committed to God's purposes, but babies were not baptized in the Catholic way of assuring their eternal salvation. Baptism, as such, was a decision for adults who fully understood they were acknowledging they had a new life in Christ. Infants and children, until they reached an age where they, too, could understand this acknowledgment of a new spiritual life, were not to be baptized. In Grandma's town of Sobotiste, this issue between Hutterite belief and Catholic doctrine came to a head in the mid 1700s:

1733: In this year came the terrifying mandate that we should not baptize our newborn babes, but that we must take them to the priests for baptism or suffer a heavy penalty. The elders and the superintendent together with the brethren met at Sobotiste to consult regarding this unheard of order, and decided not without many tears and twangs of conscience, to obey this order, since there was no other way out of this tyranny. This decision caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in the church, and resulted in a division.**

By the time Grandma and Grandpa were born, the Haban attitude toward infant baptism had radically changed in both Sobotiste and Grandpa's town of Svaty Jan. Instead of the insistence that baptism be reserved for those mature enough to make an acknowledgment of faith in Christ, newborns were quickly – very quickly – baptized. In a time of high infant mortality, the Habans had taken on the very Catholic practice of baptizing a baby as soon as possible just in case the worst happened, which it often did. In a later blog post I will go into a thorough historical study of all that happened in Grandma and Grandpa's towns regarding this conflict and subsequent division between Hutterite and Catholic beliefs regarding baptism. For now, I will look at what infant baptism looked like in Grandma and especially Grandpa's family at the time they were born.

According to the story told to her as a child, Grandma was born on December 29^th on a cold and snowy day. She was promptly baptized in the Haban Catholic chapel two days later during a blizzard even though her mother was not yet recovered from her birth to attend the baptism herself. The actual baptismal records back this up...sort of. According to the records, Grandma was born on December 28^th, not the 29^th and baptized on December 31^th. Grandma always celebrated her birthday on the 29^th and it's possible the church records, more interested in recording the baptismal date, got the birth date wrong in this case. Maybe without Grandma's mother present to set things straight, Grandma's father may have given the wrong birth date. Either way, Grandma was baptized quickly.

Grandpa was one of nine children and the only boy.*** Three of his sisters died in infancy, five survived to adulthood. According to the baptismal records, Grandpa and all of his sisters were baptized within one to two days of birth. The first of Grandpa's siblings, twins, were baptized the same day they were born. One of the twins didn't survive. Grandpa himself was born on April 17^th and was baptized on the 18^th.

Below, I've included snips of the actual entries from the baptismal records of Grandma and Grandpa and his sisters. The information given is as follows: First column is what number the child was that year in that church/town. Grandpa (Andreas) was child number 39. Second column is the day of birth, third column the day of baptism. Fourth column is first name of child. Fifth and sixth column is male or female, seventh and eighth column is legitimate or illegitimate birth. The ninth column in the father and mother's names and religion. The tenth column is a mystery – perhaps the name of the priest officiating the baptism? The eleventh column is the names and religion of the godparents. The twelfth column is the baptismal name of the infant, though in most of the cases it does not differ from the given name. There seems to be a note in the second entry for Maria, perhaps because she was the second Maria baptized in the family, the first Maria being the twin that had died. The last column, “observationes”, seems to be a place for comments, though it is mostly used to note if a child survived infancy or not. A small black cross was an indication that the child did not.

(A click on the snips should open them in a larger screen that is easily readable.)

So, the Haban, by the time Grandma and Grandpa were born, had come quite far from their Anabaptist/Hutterite belief of adult baptism only, and now fully embraced the Catholic practice of infant baptism. This departure from the tenet of faith that gave the Anabaptists their very name does seem to be a drastic turn around. After all, these people were persecuted and chased all over Europe for refusing to baptize their infants. The events that led up to this 180 reversal were not pretty. But that's a story for a future blog post...

*That story can be found in the post from June 1, 2018,  Stumbling into the Past, Part 2

**Journal entry found in The Story of the Mennonites by C. Henry Smith

***Fun fact: Grandpa, Andrew Cederle, was the only boy with eight sisters. His son, also Andrew Cederle, was the only boy with four sisters as was his son, another Andrew Cederle, again, the only boy with four sisters. There were at least two more Andrew Cederle's before Grandpa, his father and grandfather, but I have no information regarding their siblings.

The snips of the baptismal records are from the Family Search website, a great collection of old records. (Family Search.org Records Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books, 1592-1935 Roman Catholic (Rímsko-katolícká cirkev) Senica Moravský Svätý Ján Baptisms (Krsty) 1877-189... (Inv. č. 1477 (pokrač.) They can be challenging to decipher since they are all handwritten and vary in quality. Thankfully, whoever was doing the entering of data in the baptismal records of Grandpa's hometown had a relatively clear, neat handwriting. Not so in Grandma's hometown.