Since in Switzerland no original drawings or paintings picturing any of the early Anabaptists or what they experienced have been known up to now, the presentation of the colored drawings in this issue deserves a short comment. The manuscript codex in which the drawings have been found has been preserved in the Central Library of Zürich and bears the signature Ms B 316. It contains the reformation history written by the Zürich theologian and church leader Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), completed 1567. It is, however, not the original manuscript by Bullinger himself, but a copy produced by the goldsmith Heinrich Thomanns, member of the city council of Zürich, in 1605/06.

The drawings illustrating the text of the reformation history, therefore, are not the pictures of an eye-witness. No individual similarities can be expected. But the scenery of the events, the Main Church (Grossmünster) or the place of the execution by drowning in the Limmat river or the “Witches Tower” where Anabaptists ...

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