The Protestant Reformation, begun with Martin Luther’s posting of The Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, rapidly escalated into an evangelical reform movement that transformed European Christianity. Less tha
This 1991 book is a collection of writings by early Reformation radicals which illustrates both the diversity and the areas of agreement in their political thinking. The texts are drawn from the period 1521–7, centring on the German Peasants' War of 1524–6. The thinkers represented - Muntzer, Karlstadt, Grebel, Hut, Denck, and others - differed on important theological issues, yet all rejected the magistral reformation as serving the interests of society's elites. They advocated a strategy of Reformation from below, a sweeping transformation of society to the benefit of the lay commoner and the local community. With the start of the Peasants' War, radicals divided over the issue of the legitimacy of force. This division shaped the ways in which they confronted the failure of the Peasants' War and the alternate strategies for survival developed in its aftermath. Appended to the texts are a number of political programmes of the Peasants' War. These documents illustrate ways in which the
The Reformation was originally an attack on a corrupt church, sparked by Martin Luther, but for some it did not go far enough. Thomas MuI^ntzer, originally Luther's proteI?geI?, became increasingly c
