"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.

"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.

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.

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.

Communal Reformation is the most original and provocative book to appear in its field in the past quarter-century. It met with an enthusiastic response, particularly in England and the United States, when first published in Germany in 1985 and is now available in translation. Peter Blickle's groundbreaking study, which is intended for scholars and students interested in the history of pre-modern Europe, the development of Germany, the history of Christianity, and historical sociology, reconstructs the connection between the crisis of rural society at the end of the Middle Ages, the great Peasants' War of 1525, and the reformation as a social movement. Blickle focuses on southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern eras (roughly 1400 to 1600), though his work has important implications for the social and religious history of Europe as a whole.

This book, first published in 1979, presents a series of important investigations into the German Peasant War of 1525 – the last great peasant revolt and the first modern revolution. Previously under-studied by English-speaking historians, these essays provide a valuable analysis of the aims and extent of the Peasant War, and are representative of the various elements in the historiographical debate.