Saints and sinners: a documented list of sexual scandals and morals discipline
Christopher asked (2026-11-07) for a documented list of the people and scandals around the Reformation and the Anabaptist movement: clerical concubinage, broken vows of celibacy, premarital pregnancy, adultery, bigamy, same-sex relationships, and the punishments and banishments that followed. It is meant as a deliberately ironic section, to balance the strict moral principles of the Mennonite and Amish traditions with the human record.
Scope.
- Included: consensual sexual “sins” as the churches and courts of the time defined them, and what was done about them.
- Left out on purpose: murder, robbery, rape and sexual abuse. Those are crimes against other people, not sins of morality, and Christopher asked for them to be kept off this list.
- Living people: none are named (vault rule 1). Modern church cases are listed by congregation only.
Evidence ratings. Documented = a contemporary record or the person’s own letter. Reported = standard histories agree, primary source not checked here. Polemic = an accusation by opponents, which may be propaganda. Reading = our own AI transcription of a register line, not yet checked by a person.
1. The old Church: concubinage as a business
| Who | When / where | What | Rating | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clergy of the diocese of Constance (which included Zurich) | c.1500–1522 | Priests widely lived with women and had children. The bishop’s administration tolerated it and profited from fees and dispensations instead of enforcing celibacy. Constance’s own city council complained of it | reported | Wikipedia: Hugo von Hohenlandenberg |
| Bishop Hugo von Hohenlandenberg of Constance | 1520s | Said to have had a long affair with Barbara von Hof, wife of the mayor of Constance. Not in the Swiss historical dictionary | rumour | Wikipedia |
| Felix Manz’s father, a Grossmünster cleric named Hans Mantz (the provost or a chaplain) | c.1498, Zurich | Fathered Felix outside marriage; a chronicle calls Felix “the canon’s son” | documented | Wikipedia (de): Felix Manz |
2. The reformers: broken vows and secret marriages
| Who | When / where | What | Rating | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Huldrych Zwingli, then priest at Einsiedeln | 1518 | Rumoured to have seduced the daughter of a Zurich official. In a long letter to Heinrich Utinger he explained that the woman was really a barber’s daughter at Einsiedeln, that she was pregnant, and that he was not the only man involved. He admitted the relationship | documented (his own letter) | swissinfo: “A virgin by day, a wench by night” |
| Zwingli and ten other priests | early 1522 | Petitioned the Bishop of Constance to let priests marry. Refused | documented | Wikipedia: Hugo von Hohenlandenberg |
| Zwingli and Anna Reinhart, widow of Hans Meyer von Knonau | 1522 secretly; public wedding 2 April 1524 (some say 5 April) | A priest’s secret marriage, kept hidden for two years | documented | Christian History: Zwingli timeline |
| Wilhelm Reublin, priest at Witikon (later an Anabaptist leader) | 28 April 1523 | Married Adelheid Leemann, one of the first Zurich priests to marry openly | reported | Schaff, History of the Christian Church vol. 8 |
| Leo Jud, Zwingli’s colleague | 19 Sept 1523 | A priest who married | reported | Wikipedia: Leo Jud; Schaff vol. 8 |
| Balthasar Hubmaier, priest, later Anabaptist leader | by 1525 | Married Elisabeth (Elsbeth) | reported | Wikipedia: Balthasar Hubmaier |
| Martin Luther | 13 June 1525 | An ex-monk married Katharina von Bora, an escaped nun | documented | standard biographies |
| Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor | 1529 | Married Anna Adlischwyler, a former nun | reported | swissinfo: the challenges of marrying a nun |
| Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the leading Protestant prince | 4 March 1540 | Married Margarethe von der Saale while his first wife was alive. Luther, Melanchthon and Bucer signed secret “confessional advice” allowing it, on condition it stay secret; Melanchthon and Bucer attended the wedding. When it became known it was a scandal across Protestant Europe | documented | Wikipedia: Margarethe von der Saale; Schaff vol. 7 |
3. The Anabaptists: founders and fringe
| Who | When / where | What | Rating | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conrad Grebel and Barbara | 6 Feb 1522, Zurich | His bride was probably a novice of the Oetenbach convent, and already pregnant at the wedding | reported | Wikipedia (de): Konrad Grebel |
| George Blaurock (Jörg Cajacob), vicar of Trin | by 1524 | A Catholic priest who gave up celibacy and married before coming to Zurich | documented | Wikipedia (de): Jörg Blaurock |
| Anabaptists of St. Gallen and Appenzell | 1525–26 | Zwingli’s Elenchus (1527) describes “sexual excesses” among ecstatic Anabaptist groups there, and in January 1526 he asked Vadian for details of the “terrible events”. Some of the enthusiasts were women who claimed prophetic or messianic roles | polemic (Zwingli, an opponent) | Cambridge: “A Messiah for Women: Religious Commotion in the North-East of Switzerland, 1525–1526” |
| Ludwig Hätzer, Anabaptist sympathiser and Bible translator | beheaded at Constance, 4 Feb 1529 | Officially for adultery (the Swiss historical dictionary says bigamy). His anti-Trinitarian views were probably the real reason; the court record avoids mentioning his teaching | documented (charge); motive debated | Wikipedia: Ludwig Haetzer; Geoffrey Dipple, “Sex, Blasphemy, and the Block”, Renaissance and Reformation 40:4 (2017) |
| The Anabaptist kingdom of Münster | 1534–35 | Jan van Leiden decreed polygamy and took about 16 wives, with Divara (widow of Jan Matthys) as queen. The marriage decree was compulsory, so this is as much coercion as “sin” | documented | Wikipedia: Divara van Haarlem; Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium |
| Jan van Batenburg and the Batenburgers | 1530s, Netherlands | A violent post-Münster sect. The leader kept the right to “give” members wives from the group | reported | Wikipedia: Batenburgers |
| Menno Simons | left the priesthood Jan 1536 | A former Catholic priest who married Geertruydt, probably at Groningen, about 1536 | reported | GAMEO: Geertruydt |
How the Mennonites answered. Menno’s followers reacted to Münster with a strict church discipline: the ban and shunning. They later quarrelled over whether a wife had to shun an excommunicated husband. Swaen Rutgers of Emden was threatened with the ban in the 1550s for refusing to shun hers, and the Wismar Agreements (1554) put out members who married outside the church (Krahn - Dutch Anabaptism (1968), pp. 231–233).
4. Same-sex relationships
| Who | When / where | What | Rating | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Richard Puller von Hohenburg, an Alsatian knight, and his servant Anton Mätzler | burned in Zurich’s market square, 24 Sept 1482 | Convicted of sodomy after Puller “confessed” under torture to other male relationships. Historians see a political motive: Strasbourg reportedly paid Zurich to get rid of him, and he claimed the charge was a pretext to seize his lands | documented (trial); motive debated | Wikipedia: Richard Puller von Hohenburg |
| Bern’s criminal court | 1600s | Investigated “sodomy”, which the records use for homosexuality and bestiality alike. No named Bern same-sex case found yet | documented (category) | Tina Adam, TSEG 2020 (link) |
| Ames Mennonite Church, Iowa | 1988 | Expelled by the Iowa-Nebraska Mennonite Conference because members included gay couples in covenanted relationships; its gay pastor’s credentials were revoked earlier | reported (from Mennonite news coverage summarised in a search; the article was not opened) | Peace Theology: church discipline |
| Germantown Mennonite Church, Philadelphia, the oldest Mennonite congregation in America (1683) | 1997 | Expelled from the Franconia Conference, 178 votes to 40, for accepting members in same-sex covenanted relationships; its pastor lost his credentials. Franconia later acknowledged the harm done | documented | Religion News Service, 1997; Germantown Mennonite: “Twenty years ago” |
| Alpha Mennonite Church, New Jersey | 2009 | Franconia began removing it for keeping its openly gay pastor | reported | Wikipedia: Franconia Mennonite Conference |
5. Bern’s morals courts: the system the family lived under
- The court: from 1528 every Bernese parish had a Chorgericht (morals court) of the pastor and local elders. It summoned people for fornication, premarital pregnancy, adultery, drinking, dancing, quarrels and missing church.
- The law: the city’s ordinance “on marriage matters, whoring and adultery punishments” (Chorgerichtssatzung … hurey und ehebruchs-straff) was issued in 1634 and reissued in 1667 (SSRQ BE I/6.2, p. 732).
- Smaller cases ended in fines, public confession or prison on bread and water. Couples whose first child came too soon after the wedding were fined after the marriage (according to researchers on the FamilySearch Switzerland forum; not checked against the ordinance).
- Repeat offenders went to the criminal court in Bern. It could sentence banishment or corporal punishment. In two thirds of all its cases the outcome was banishment or release.
Named cases from the Bern criminal records (Tina Adam, 2020):
| Who | When | What | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Susanna Christen | Oct 1687 | Mother of illegitimate twins; the morals court could not establish the father | sent up to the criminal court |
| Madlen Meyer of Remigen | 1600s | Repeated fornication and illegitimate children; under torture her list of partners grew longer | the men were fined by the morals court; she was sentenced to death. Adam’s example of the double standard |
6. From the registers we transcribed (Bern parishes)
These lines come from the handwriting-recognition study. They are Claude Opus 5.5 readings, not yet checked by a person; [?] marks uncertain words. None of the people is known to be a family member. A witness named Christen Mischler appears at Wahlern in 1808, a surname of the tree, but no link is known.
| Parish, register | Date | Entry (reading) | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lauperswil, deaths 1746 (K Lauperswil 22, image 40) | born 20 Aug 1745; hearing 25 Mar 1746 | ”Anna Büelman ohnehelich gebohren”. The mother, Anna Wälthi of the Schmalenweg, named Christen Büelman of Hochstetten as the father “before the morals court”. The child was later buried without the pastor’s knowledge. The pastor wrote de occultis non judicat Ecclesia (“the Church does not judge hidden things”) and ordered the sexton never again to bury anyone without telling him | illegitimate birth; paternity named before the Chorgericht |
| Lauperswil, same page | 1746 | Verena Geissbühler’s child, “ohnehelich … attested to Christen Lebzisser[?] of Langnau”, born on a Sunday, died the next day | illegitimate birth; father named |
| Lützelflüh, baptisms 1771–97 (K Lützelflüh 8, image 61) | a Sunday, 23 January | ”baptized an illegitimate [child]”; Christen Rindlisbacher named (“angegeben”) as the father | illegitimate baptism; father named |
| Wahlern, baptisms 1808 (K Wahlern 5, image 125) | note dated 8 Nov 1813 | Catharina Kissli; “assigned to Hans Henger[?] as illegitimate” (als unehelich zugesprochen) | court-assigned paternity, five years after the birth |
| Eggiwil, banns 1840 (K Eggiwil 20, image 90) | 1840 | ”Elisabeth Moser, Johannes’s spuria” and “Ulrich Brand[?], Catharina’s spurius”. Spurius/spuria was the clerks’ Latin for a child of unknown or unmarried father, listed under the mother’s name | illegitimate adults marrying, still labelled at their banns |
| Mühleberg, deaths 1802–03 (K Mühleberg 16, image 39) | 1802 | ”a half-year-old child named Marg[?] … an illegitimate one” | illegitimate infant death |
7. In the family’s own traditions
- The English-ancestor story (Miller side): a prominent Englishman’s young daughter became pregnant and was sent to give birth “on the eastern side of Lake Thun”. This is a family tradition only, unproven (English ancestor recollection (Miller side)).
- No documented case in the tree yet. The tree’s own register checks have not turned up a morals-court entry for a direct ancestor. The Bern Chorgericht minutes for Eggiwil, Signau and Lauperswil would be the place to look.
A historian’s view
Helmut Puff, Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland, 1400–1600 (Chicago, 2003):
- Accusations of sexual sin, sodomy above all, were a weapon of the Reformation. Protestants used them to paint monks and the papacy as corrupt; Catholics answered in kind.
- The same rhetoric made the authorities nervous of even naming the sin. In the 1500s that suppressed court records, so the documented cases are fewer than the real ones.
- His point: the scandals in this list are partly real behaviour and partly propaganda in a religious war, and each side’s list of the other’s sins should be read with that in mind. That includes Zwingli’s charges against the St. Gallen Anabaptists.
Tina Adam (“Gendered prosecution in seventeenth-century Bern”, TSEG 2020):
- Protestant Bern made marriage the foundation of society and criminalised all sex outside it.
- In practice the burden fell mainly on women: poor maidservants and unwed mothers. The men named as fathers were usually only fined.
- Her point: the morals courts that shaped the family’s Reformed and Anabaptist ancestors enforced a sharp double standard.
Still to do
- Church discipline near Danzig (existing task in Open questions): find the Prussian Mennonite source that listed members excommunicated and readmitted, and add its sexual-discipline cases. The Heubuden church book 1772–1806 transcription checked on 2026-11-07 has no ban entries task/ai
- Bern Chorgericht minutes for Eggiwil, Signau, Lauperswil and Langnau: check for named ancestors. Most are not online; some are on FamilySearch film task/human
- Check the transcribed register entries above against the page images, and search the rest of the downloaded registers for unehelich, spurius and Chorgericht once the fine-tuned reader is ready task/ai
- Read Puff (2003) and Dipple (2017) for more named Swiss cases task/human
Record compiled 7 November 2026.
About this research
Supporting documentation is linked throughout. This project is an exercise in AI-assisted research and development, and I haven’t manually verified every link or conclusion. All transcriptions and translations of Swiss parish records were made with AI, and their accuracy should be treated accordingly.