Waite's biography of Joris concentrates on his career as a DutchAnabaptist instead of his later, better-known activity as a Spiritualistin Basel. Waite argues convincingly that, from 1536 to 1539, Joris wasthe most influential Anabaptist leader in the Netherlands. Adopting amiddle path between the revolutionary chiliasm of the M?nsterAnabaptist kingdom and the radical separatism of Menno Simons and hisflock, Joris sought to unite the splintered Melchiorite movement underhis leadership. However, as Waite notes, history has been unkind to Joris: largelyignored by historians (the last book-length.

Dutch society has enjoyed a reputation, or notoriety, for permissiveness from the sixteenth century to present times. The Dutch Republic in the Golden Age was the only society that tolerated religious dissenters of all persuasions in early modern Europe, despite being committed to a strictly Calvinist public Church. Professors R. Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop have brought together a group of leading historians from the US, the UK and the Netherlands to probe the history and myth of this Dutch tradition of religious tolerance. This 2002 collection of outstanding essays reconsiders and revises contemporary views of Dutch tolerance. Taken as a whole, the volume's innovative scholarship offers unexpected insights into this important topic in religious and cultural history.

This book features Anabaptism of the Low Countries from its earliest traceable beginnings to the end of the sixteenth century. The major part of the book is devoted to the hundred years preceding the death of Menno Simons in 1561, after whom the Anabaptists received the name, Mennonites. A decade later the Netherlands gained independence and the Anabaptists were granted relative freedom. Prior to this Dutch Anabaptist refugee settlements and churches had been established along the North Sea and the Baltic Coast from Emden and Hamburg Altona up to the mouth of the Vistula River. The roots of Dutch Anabaptism, similar to those of the Dutch Reformed Church, can be found in the native soil and were nourished and stimulated from near and far. The emerging hwnanistically influenced Sacramentarian movement of the Low Countries modified and spiritualized the meaning of the remaining two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's supper. Dutch mysticism, the Brethren of Common Life, Erasmian hwnanism, the chambers of rhetoric, and the ties with Wittenberg (Luther, Karlstadt, Muntzer), Cologne (Westerburg), (B. Rothmann), Strassburg (Bucer, Capito), Zurich (Zwingli), Munster and Emden led to the introduction of Anabaptism in the Low Coun tries by Melchior Hofmann, coming from Strassburg in 1530.

Annotation Examines women who chose to risk persecution and martyrdom to pursue the radical Protestant movement during the Reformation. Most of the 34 essays focus on a single woman, but others discuss such groups as women in the Hutterite song book, women in Tiron who recanted, and women leaders in Augsburg. The sections begin with introductions to the context of Anabaptist women in Switzerland, southern Germany and Austria, and northern Germany and the Netherlands. Canadian card order number: C96-932001-9. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Here is a collection of accounts of more than 4011 Christians burned at the stake, of countless bodies torn on the rack, torn tongues, ears, hands, feet, gouged eyes, people buried alive, and of many who were willing to bear the cross of persecution and death for the sake of Christ.

The writings of Menno Simons and Dirk Philips have been used as the basic materials for this study, the major aim of which is to discern the more or less normative position of the Mennonites or later Doopsgezinden during the first generation, with Menno Simons and Dirk Philips as their major spokesmen.