German Peasants' War and Anabaptist Community of Goods

James Stayer argues that Anabaptist community of goods continued the popular radicalism of the early Reformation and the Peasants' War of 1525. During the German Reformation hundreds of thousands of commoners were mobilized by the hope that established clerical and aristocratic order could be replaced by justice and equity based on the divine law of the Bible. After the defeat of the commoners in the Peasants' War, some of the most ardent adherents of social and religious reform attempted to achieve these same aspirations by trying to implement the apostolic model of Acts 2 and 4 through the Anabaptists. Thus, as Stayer reveals, the Peasants' War was an essential formative experience for many of the original leaders of Anabaptism.