From Radicals to Survivors: Strasbourg’s Religious Nonconformists over Two Generations, 1525-1570

This is the first extensive study of Strasbourg’s diverse religious nonconformists beyond 1543, and the first to explore their continuities and discontinuities over two generations. Based on vast archival records in Strasbourg and secondary sources, it moves beyond the political and theological emphases of earlier works to include social history, portraits of village life, and the second generation to 1570. Derksen finds that second generation nonconformists were substantially different from the first. Their social profile changed; from an urban mix of leaders, intellectuals and artisans, they became largely rural folk composed of lower class artisans. Further, in outlook their view narrowed from radicals who sought to change church and society at its root to dissenters concerned mainly to survive. At the same time there were continuities. When the revolts of the 1525 Peasants’ War were crushed, dissident ideals found new expression in spiritualist, sectarian and apocalyptic streams. In these streams, into the 1560s and beyond, nonconformists continued their call for social and economic justice and meaningful participation in religion. The book will be of interest to historians of the Early Modern period, the Reformation’s radicals, popular religion, sixteenth-century society and Strasbourg, and to those interested in the free church tradition.