Menno Simons

Menno Simons was born in 1496 at Witmarsum in Friesland, in the northern Netherlands, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1524. Reading the New Testament led him to doubt the doctrine of transubstantiation and, after a neighbour was executed for being rebaptized, the practice of infant baptism. The violent Anabaptist kingdom at Münster in 1534 and 1535, in which his own brother was killed in a related uprising, convinced him that peaceful believers needed a shepherd. In January 1536 he renounced the priesthood and joined the Anabaptists, and he was soon ordained an elder. For the rest of his life he lived as a hunted man with a price on his head, travelling with his family through the Netherlands and northern Germany, organizing congregations and writing. His Foundation of Christian Doctrine (1539-40) taught adult baptism, a disciplined church separate from the world, and the refusal of violence and oaths. He died in 1561 at Wüstenfelde in Holstein. Mennonites and, through them, the Amish trace their origins to his followers. He lived as a hunted preacher, with a price on his head.

Faith: Roman Catholic priest in Friesland who became an Anabaptist leader; his followers became known as Mennonites. Source: Wikipedia