in January 1527 Manz was publicly executed in Zurich by drowning for the crime of rebaptism. But by that time, two years after the forming of the first congregation, the movement had spread hundreds of miles beyond its starting point through a unique missionary zeal. By May 1526 there was an Anabaptist assembly in Augsburg under the leadership of the highly gifted Hans Denck. Denck had been expelled from Nuremberg on 21 January 1525 for holding to ideas critical of the Lutheran teaching in that city.