Kat Hill: Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief in Reformation Germany. Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525–1585. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015; pp. xii + 268.

Abstract

<p>This is a very fine book and all the more impressive as it is Kat Hill's first book-length study. The subject, on the face of it, appears to be yet another monograph in a crowded and well-worked historiographical subject. A closer examination reveals this is an altogether original contribution. Hill will be criticised for retaining the Anabaptist nomenclature, but that is a red herring and not worth quibbling over. So what, that they did not think of themselves as such? Neither did Lutherans, Calvinists, Waldensians, Hussites, Cathars, Lollards, Wyclifites, or few of the other great and significant movements in religious history. That they all regarded themselves as Christian is axiomatic. The study is predicated upon wide-ranging and impressive attention to primary sources and largely hitherto-overlooked archival materials. What Hill offers in consequence is a stimulating excavation of riches from old mines Reformation scholars believed, erroneously, were played out. Clearly there is more to the tale than what has been recorded or taken into account. What Hill attempts to do, and succeeds admirably, is reconstructing the ways and means by which people became part of the Anabaptist world in German territories ruled by the Wettins in the sixteenth century.</p>