"A major book that scholars will want to study closely, both for its provocative treatment of the interaction of economic and social pressures with politics and ideology and for its many revisions of Marxist and non-Marxist interpretations... [Blickle's] book will influence scholarship for some time to come."-- Journal of Modern History.

"Contemporary misogyny and antisemitism have their roots in the demonization of women and Jews in medieval Christendom. In church art and mass preaching, the construct of the devil as an outcast from heaven and the source of all evil was linked both to the conception of women as sensual and malicious figures betraying man's soul on its arduous journey to salvation and to the notion of Jews as treacherous dissidents in the Christian landscape. These stereotypes, widely disseminated for over three hundred years, persist today. The exemplum, or cautionary story incorporated into preachers' manuals and popular homilies, was an important mode of religious teaching for clerical and lay folk alike. Sermon narratives drawn from Hindu mythology, Arab storytelling, and secular folktales entertained all classes of medieval society while dispensing theological and cultural instruction. In Devils, Women, and Jews, the vital genre of the medieval sermon story is, for the first time, made accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. Rendered in modern English, the tales provide an invaluable primary resource for medievalists, anthropologists, psychologists, folklorists, and students of women's studies and Judaica. Critical introductions and explanatory headnotes contextualize the tales, and comprehensive endnotes and a bibliography allow readers to follow up analogue and subject studies in their own areas of interest."--from amazon.ca.

First Published in 1976. This is Volume 3 of a colelction of essays in the Journal of Peasant Studies on the War. There is immense importance of the German Peasant War, both in itself as the first national peasant revolt in Germany and because of the influence of Engels work on the subject.

In the 1520s, a brief but savage war broke out in Germany when various insurgent groups rose to overthrow the power structure. The movement took as its emblem a peasant's shoe and the collective title of 'Bundschuh', and this became known as the Peasants' War (1524–1526) - although the rebel armies actually included as many townsmen, miners, disaffected knights and mercenary soldiers as rural peasants. The risings involved large armies of up to 18,000 men, and there were several major battles before the movement was put down with the utmost ferocity. This book details the armies, tactics, costume, weapons, personalities and events of this savage war.

The German Peasants' War of 1524-26 was the greatest popular uprising in European history before the French Revolution. Its significance is heightened by the contemporary struggle for religious renewal in the Reformation, which had a decisive influence on its course. Yet very little writing in English has discussed the Peasants' War in detail. This volume traces the war through contemporary documents, both published and original, for the English-speaking reader in translation. It gives generous coverage to the causes and course of the revolt, and to its ideological mainsprings and forms of organization. At the same time it illustrates the authorities' response, the role of towns in the revolt, and the sociological variety of the participants.The main political theories inspired by the revolt receive full treatment, and the volume concludes with detailed coverage of the attempts to suppress the insurrection and its political and social aftermath. Accompanying the selection of 162 documents is an extended introduction, which traces the main issues facing historians in seeking to understand the revolt: it also provides thumbnail sketches of the course of the Peasants' War in the five main areas of rebellion. The volume includes eight maps for convenient reference and a select bibliography for further reading.This study will be of particular interest to undergraduate and graduate students of history, politics, religion, sociology, and anthropology taking courses on early modern Europe, revolutions and social movements, peasant studies, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and the Reformation.Bob Scribner is currently British Academy Marc Fitch Research Reader in History, Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Clare College.Tom Scott is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Liverpool.

2022 Reprint of the 1926 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. The Peasant War in Germany was a widespread popular revolt in some German-speaking areas in Central Europe from 1524 to 1525. It failed because of intense opposition from the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. The survivors were fined and achieved few, if any, of their goals. Like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, the war consisted of a series of both economic and religious revolts in which peasants and farmers, often supported by Anabaptist clergy, took the lead. The War was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789. The fighting was at its height in the middle of 1525. Engels analyzes the social and economic forces which brought about the peasant revolt of 1525 and its role in the Reformation. He portrays vividly the contrasting figures of Thomas Muenzer and Martin Luther, in relation to the revolutionary peasants and to the princes. The book has an enduring theoretical interest, as one of the earliest discussions of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. Illustrated with drawings and woodcuts of the time.

International Booker Prize Finalist The Spectator (UK): Best Book of the Year From the award-winning author of The Order of the Day, a powerful account of the German Peasants’ War (1524–25) that shows striking parallels to class conflicts of our time. In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformation launched an attack on privilege and the Catholic Church, but it rapidly became an established, bourgeois authority itself. Rural laborers and the urban poor, who were still being promised equality in heaven, began to question why they shouldn’t have equality here and now on earth. There ensued a furious struggle between the powerful—the comfortable Protestants—and the others, the wretched. They were led by a number of theologians, one of whom has left his mark on history through his determination and sheer energy. His name was Thomas Müntzer, and he set Germany on fire. The War of the Poor recounts his story—that of an insurrection through the Word. In his characteristically bold, cinematic style, Éric Vuillard draws insights from this revolt from nearly five hundred years ago, which remains shockingly relevant to the dire inequalities we face today.