New Directions in the Radical Reformation - (Studies in Central European Histories) (Hardcover)

About the Book

Eight essays in this volume challenge basic assumptions about the Radical Reformation. They critique categories used to define Reformation radicals, provide new perspectives on the relationship between religious change and socio-political radicalism, and problematize the very concept of radicalism.

Book Synopsis

The eight essays in this volume approach the study of the Radical Reformation from new perspectives and challenge some of the basic assumptions of the field. Some critique and problematize the typologies developed to distinguish Reformation radicals from each other and from the Magisterial Reformers. Others apply an equally iconoclastic approach to existing scholarship on the relationship between religious change and socio-political radicalism in early modern Europe. A final group concentrate specifically on revising the history of Anabaptism by tracing its long-term development across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and recovering the lives of normal Anabaptists to write a true social history of the movement that avoids relying on the biographies and prescriptive writings of its leadership.