In some cases, as in Moravia, they formed separate communities of their own, some of which survived as religious sects long after the extinction of the main movement.
In the earlier years of the fourth decade of the century, however, a change came over a considerable section of the movement.

In Central and South-eastern Germany, notably in the Moravian territories, barring isolated individuals here and there, the Anabaptist party continued to maintain its attitude of non-resistance and the voluntariness of association which characterized it at first.

The fearful waves of persecution, however, which successively swept over it were successful at last in partially checking its progress.

At length the only places in this part of the empire where it succeeded in retaining any effective organization was in the Moravian territories, where persecution was less strong and the communities more closely knit together than elsewhere.

Otherwise persecution had played sad havoc with the original Anabaptist groups throughout Central Europe.
Meanwhile a movement had sprung up in Western and Northern Germany, following the course of the Rhine Valley, that effectually threw the older movement of Southern and Eastern Germany into the background.
These earlier movements remained essentially religious and theological, owing, as Cornelius points out (_Muensterische Aufruhr_, vol.ii.p.