Drowned in the Limmat - Lindenhof
On 5 January 1527, Reformed Zurich bound the Anabaptist leader Felix Manz hand and foot and drowned him in the Limmat right below this terrace for the crime of baptizing adults, the first of six Anabaptists drowned here, and the city waited until 2004 to mark the spot.
Su questo luogo
High above the Limmat, the Lindenhof is the oldest ground in Zurich: a Roman customs post, then a fortress built under Emperor Valentinian I, then an imperial palace, and today a quiet terrace of linden trees and chess players. But the water below holds one of the darkest chapters of the Reformation. Felix Manz, a gifted humanist who had studied Hebrew alongside Huldrych Zwingli, broke with his teacher over infant baptism, and on 21 January 1525 his circle performed the first adult baptisms in Zurich. The city council answered with arrests, a prison tower in the middle of the river, and finally an edict of 7 March 1526 that made rebaptism punishable by drowning. On 5 January 1527, as his mother and brother urged him to stand firm, Manz was bound with a stick between his arms and knees and pushed into the icy Limmat from a fishermen's platform at the Schipfe, the first Anabaptist executed by Reformed Zurich. Five more followed by 1532. For centuries the city stayed silent: it refused a memorial in 1952, and only in 2004 was a black basalt plaque set into the river wall just below this terrace.
Fatti principali
- 1527 year — On 5 January, Felix Manz became the first Anabaptist executed by Reformed Zurich, drowned in the Limmat below this terrace
- 6 Anabaptists drowned — Manz and five others were drowned from a fishermen's platform in the Limmat between 1527 and 1532
- 477 years — The wait between Manz's drowning and the black basalt plaque set into the river wall below in 2004