Jacob Hutter (b.?-d.1536) - Tyrolean Anabaptist leader and founder of the Hutterites. (also Jakob Hutter)
Jakob Hutter was a hatmaker from South Tirol (northern Italy today). He became the leader of a radical Christian movement that swept through the German-speaking regions of Europe in the 1520s to 30s. Men and women broke away from the Roman Catholic church, which had become corrupt and no longer gave them the spiritual nourishment they craved. Thousands had themselves baptized, a criminal offense which carried the death penalty. In Moravia (present-day Czech Republic) religious tolerance was granted. Here the Anabaptists, as they came to be called, gathered under Hutter’s leadership. They practiced community of goods, nonviolence, and baptism of adult believers.
Jakob Hutter traveled often between Moravia and Tirol preach and baptize. He was arrested on December 1, 1535 and taken to Innsbruck, where King Ferdinand had his government. There he was tortured and burned alive on February 25, 1536.
His words are recorded in eight letters, written under severe persecution to his brothers and sisters. But his enduring legacy is a church that has survived the ravages of time and continues the struggle today.
Further reading:
The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren (Plough Publishing House 1987)
Brotherly Faithfulness: Epistles from a Time of Persecution (Plough Publishing House 1979)
Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation by Werner O. Packull, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995
[1] Some sources say he was executed the same day.