"The publication of this volume is cause for celebration! The years of painstaking research in untold towns, cities, and libraries in Europe, as well as in North America, the empathy the author brought to the subject... the skill evident in translating, especially technical terms, and the firm grasp of both minute details and their implications, as well as the overall story, have raised the level of historical scholarship to a new high." -- Cornelius J. Dyck, Church History

The oldest and largest communal society in North America, the Hutterites -- Anabaptists of German origin, like the Amish, Mennonites, and Brethren -- have long been the subject of scholarly study and popular curiosity. Werner Packull tells the comprehensive story of the Hutterite beginnings in their original homelands -- particularly in Tyrol and Moravia -- and discovers important relationships among early Anabaptist sects.

"Extensive quotations from the Hutterite Chronicle, the prison letters, and other witness accounts give immediacy to Packull's narrative and provide English readers with a window on primary sources that remain largely untranslated... With its wealth of evocative source material, it is a highly readable account that will appeal not only to specialists but also to undergraduates and general readers." -- Erika Rummel, American Historical Review

"Packull is to be lauded for doing the research so thoroughly and presenting the results so lucidly. His is a meticulous and masterful piece of scholarship in a neglected area of ecclesiastical history." -- Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance

"An indispensable tool and resources for all who describe and interpret these traditions from religiousand social perspectives." -- Walter Klaassen, Conrad Grebel Review

"This remarkable history of early Swiss and Upper German Anabaptism sets a new norm for scholarship, combining as it does for the first time in such depth the methodologies of social history and the history of ideas. Werner O. Packull seems to have left no stone unturned." -- Leonard Gross, Mennonite Quarterly Review