The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists

Anabaptism was essentially a German product and did not take root in the Latin countries. But the importance of this great movement in all lands possessing a strong Teutonic clement, not even excluding England, has been little realised by the average historian. The latter has been inclined for the most part to dismiss this tremendous upheaval of the disinherited classes, at the close, of the Middle Ages with a few paragraphs of abuse and often misrepresentation. We may regard Anabaptism as the culminating effort of mediaeval Christian Communism, which saw in the communisation of worldly goods (understanding by this the economic products designed for consumption the farthest goal of man s social existence. The modern notion of the socialisation of the means of production was not as yet thought of; as it was not even conceivably possible at the then stage of economic evolution.