From 1524-25, peasants marched across contemporary Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with a list of Twelve Articles demanding the right to choose their preachers, the abolition of noble monopolies on forests, rent reform, the end of arbitrary fines, and, most radical of all, the destruction of feudalism. Only seven years before, Martin Luther had launched the Protestant Reformation by nailing a list of 95 theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, castigating the Catholic Church for corruption. For a moment it seemed as if the Peasants’ War was the culmination of Luther’s proposed reforms, extending its implicit spiritual egalitarianism to the worldly realm—”[S]ince Christ redeemed us all,” the peasants claimed, “we are free, and want to remain free.” Everywhere the peasants went, their numbers grew until even some of the nobility began to wonder if a new world order was about to begin, marked by democratic norms and decentralized power structures—and, importantly, women’s participation in political struggle. By some estimates, it was the single largest popular uprising in Europe until the French Revolution. Then it was over. Luther turned on the peasants and the nobles regrouped and militarized, slaughtering 100,000 peasants in the course of a few months. Was the Peasants’ War primarily an economic or religious revolt? What were its theological underpinnings and how did they fit with other movements of the so-called “radical” Reformation?
This course explores the history and memory of the Peasants’ War over the past 500 years, placing it in the context of the religious and economic movements of its day. Examining both primary sources and historical interpretations, we will ask whether the Peasants’ War was primarily an economic or religious revolt. How do we understand the role of women in the movement? Is there a link between the mass slaughter of the peasants and the burst of witch trials in the region in the years following the war? And was the Peasants’ War ultimately, as Friedrich Engels suggested, an early example of class consciousness?
