This review brings together research in three areas of Anabaptist studies and the Radical Reformation. The first part focuses on 16th-century Anabaptism, re-examining the polygenesis model of Anabaptism articulated by Stayer, Packull and Depperman. The second part deals with the connections between Anabaptists and other Reformation dissenters, their marginalization as social groups and their relations with the intellectual movements of the age. The final section addresses historiographic and comparative issues of writing the history of marginalizaed groups, investigating some preconceptions which influence historians' approaches to Anabaptism and their implications for understanding other religious organizations.

Diverse primary sources bring out unique characteristics of one branch of the Radical Reformation. The South German/Austrian branch of the Anabaptist family was unique in its mystical origins, spiritualist emphases, fascination with the end times, and communal forms of Anabaptism. These newly translated sources--from influential pre-Anabaptist writings by Jörg Haugk von Jüchsen and Hans Hergot, through writings of Hans Hut and confessions of Ambrosius Spitelmaier in the 1520s, to the experiences of the Hutterite missionary Hans Schmidt in 1590--shed light on this part of the Anabaptist world. The collection includes testimonies of Anabaptist leaders, writings by Protestant clerics, and testimonies and hymns from Anabaptist women including Katharina Hutter and Helena von Freyberg. This is the tenth volume in the Classics of the Radical Reformation, a series of Anabaptist and Free Church documents translated and annotated under the direction of the Institute of Mennonite Studies.

"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