Ebook: German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods

In the late 1520s persecution drove many Anabaptists to Moravia where, throughout the sixteenth century, they continued the commoners' resistance to privilege in church and state. Stayer argues that in Münster, however, where there had been no Peasants' War and where urban notables were prominent in the Anabaptist leadership, Anabaptist communism was badly corrupted. The historical continuities which Stayer establishes between the Peasants' War and Anabaptism in Switzerland, south Germany, and Moravia can in part explain this contrast.