Leland Harder – författare

The dramatic story of the genesis of the Anabaptist movement, told directly through the letters of its leaders and other primary documents.The 170 letters and documents in this volume portray how Conrad Grebel, a bright young Swiss patriot, became a fervent, influential leader of the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement. The editor calls the book “a drama with five acts, prologue, and epilogue” with a cast of 107 characters. The main characters are Grebel himself and Huldrych Zwingli, the vicar at the Grossmünster in Zurich.The climax of the drama comes in January 1525 when Grebel performs the first rebaptisms, signaling the founding of a new church and the rejection of the Anabaptists by Zwingli. “These letters and documents are not published for scholars only,” states the editor, “but for all seekers and believers.”This is the fourth 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.

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.