Communal Reformation: The Quest for Salvation in the Sixteenth-Century Germany

by Peter Blickle

The Communal Reformation presents a new argument about the origins of the Protestant Reformation and their relationship to the social and political experience, institutions, and goals of the common people, both townsfolk and peasants, in Central Europe. It reveals the common quest of ordinary people in the towns and on the land for religious reform through communal action. The book focuses on southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, though it has important implications the social and religious history of Europe as a whole.

Genres: History

219 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1985

About the author

Peter Blickle teaches modern history at he University of Bern where he specialises in the Reformation and communities in the early modern period.

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blickle shifts attention back to everyday people in his argument that the Reformation spread so quickly because peasants and burghers found its theologies compelling and ideologically useful in the context of their attempts to negotiate more social and political power following the disintegration of serfdom at the end of the late medieval period. Blickle argues that the so-called “storm period” of the early Reformation (1500-1525) is better interpreted as a “communal reformation” in which peasants and burghers used ideas like “pure gospel” and “godly law” to justify social and economic reforms in their respective contexts. Rulers ultimately found it politically expedient to delegitimize and crush this resistance movement, leading to “revolt statutes,” the creation of the crime of high treason, and, ultimately, the 1525 Peasants War. According to Blickle, this is part of why the “Prince’s Reformation” takes place following the Peasants War—the rulers have had to acknowledge the cultural power of Reformation theologies, but they do so on their own terms, with the assistance of Reformers like Luther who support the political status quo and argue that the peasants are not being “Christian” when they apply what he considers “spiritual” concepts to the political world.