Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments During the Reformation

The oldest and largest communal society in North America, the Hutterites - Anabaptists of German origin, like the Amish - have long been the subject of scholarly study and popular curiosity. This work tells the story of the Hutterite beginnings in their original homelands, particularly in Tyrol and Moravia. By examining these origins, it reveals relationships among early Anabaptist sects. The book contains a biography of group founder Jacob Hutter, describing his struggle for group leadership, his efforts to save his followers from King Ferdinand's bounty hunters, and his ultimate capture and death by public execution in 1536. It also provides anecdotes about a number of figures, including Jacob Hutter's wife. It tells of arrest, of imprisonment and of torture, as well as of efforts to care for the orphans left behind by those put to death for their faith. And it describes the defensive measures taken by the victims of official terror, their underground organizations, their secret practices and religious beliefs. The book shows how three early Anabaptist orders relate to each other, then lays bare the developing hermeneutic on which they were based, offering an insight into worship practices of the earliest Anabaptists.

Review :
"This remarkable history of early Swiss and Upper German Anabaptism sets a new norm for scholarship, combining as it does for the first time in such depth the methodologies of social history and the history of ideas. Werner O. Packull seems to have left no stone unturned, yet has also gained the interpretive distance needed to set each stone in it[s] proper place. Packull has woven together the fascinating, intricate story of Upper German Anabaptism and demonstrated a high degree of historical inter-connectedness, at least within Swiss, South German, Moravian, and Silesian Anabaptism." --'The Mennonite Quarterly Review', April 1997 "John[s] (sic) Hopkins University Press is to be congratulated for publishing this volume and thus broadening its growing list of significant works on the Amish and Hutterite branches of the Anabaptist family...The scholarly apparatus is excellent, with a comprehensive bibliography of research on Anabaptism, extensive notes, and some very useful appendicies. Packull's book will be an indispensible tool and resource for all who describe and interpret these traditions from religious and social perspectives." --'The Conrad Grebel Review'