Riedemann, Peter

Peter Riedemann (1506-1556) became an Anabaptist minister at age twenty-three, at a time when these church reformers were being drowned, beheaded, and burned at the stake by the thousand for their commitment to believers baptism, nonviolence, economic sharing, and the restoration of a New Testament Christianity free from state control. He was imprisoned in Austria, but escaped three years later. A prominent early leader of the Hutterites, Riedemann died at a Hutterian intentional community in Slovakia at the age of fifty, having spent a total of nine years in prison for his faith.