Anabaptists re-baptized adults who had been baptized as infants, and the name was an insult meaning "re-baptizers" — they rejected it, holding that infant baptism was never baptism at all. The position was capital in the sixteenth century: both Catholic and Protestant authorities executed Anabaptists, often by drowning as a grim commentary on their practice. Thousands died, and the memory of that persecution shapes the tradition's theology of suffering to this day.