Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies (Volume II)

One way out of this impasse may be to search for the external conditions that produced and shaped German Anabaptism.There is, first of all, the question of popular religious movements before Anabaptism.Zeman gives the customary, cavalier dismissal to the hypo- theses of Ludwig Keller and Albrecht Ritschl, vi^ho tried to connect Anabaptism with pre- vious sectarian movements, but he cites approvingly the theories of Amadeo Molnar, which point in the same direction.Molnar links the reform movements of the Middle Ages ("the First Reformation") with those of the Reformation era ("the Second Reformation").The Anabaptists fall into the former category, a classification which Zeman disputes, though he is sympathetic with Molnar's schema as a whole.No one would not study English Metho- dism, French Jansenism, the Spanish allumbrados, or the medieval poverty movement as though such movements had no historical antecedents.Why Anabaptism should continue to be an historical orphan, without parents and without causes, is difficult to say

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