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11.	An Abbot Negotiates with his Rural Subjects – Weingarten (Upper Swabia) (1432) The Imperial Abbey of Weingarten, a Benedictine foundation, was among the richest abbeys in the southern German lands. Its abbot, an Imperial prince, ruled over some 306 square kilometers of plough....
12.	An Anabaptist Confession of Faith – The Schleitheim Articles (1527) Drafted in 1527 as a union document, the Schleitheim Articles are the most famous Anabaptist statement of faith. The Articles are attributed to Michael Sattler (c. 1495-1527), a former Benedictine....
13.	Codifying Customary Law – Germersheim (Palatinate) (16th Century) The codification of local, customary law was a prime instrument for integrating rural communities into a princely territorial state. The liberties cited presumably extended back to grants by a German....
14.	Constitution [Schwörbrief] of the Imperial City of Strasbourg (1482) This text is the final revision (valid until 1789) of Strasbourg's fundamental law. It documents the settlement of a common problem in medieval German urban history: the struggle for dominance between....
15.	Defending Clerical Marriage – Katharina Schütz Zell (1524) In this text, Katharina Schütz Zell (1497/98-1562) of Strasbourg, the daughter of a master artisan and magistrate, defends the Protestant side of the debate on celibate life versus clerical marriage.....
16.	Defending Women’s Communal Life – Caritas Pirckheimer at Nuremberg (1524) Protestant reformers condemned celibacy and advocated marriage. According to Luther and his followers, the problem with celibacy was not the abuse thereof – as most earlier reformers had argued –....
17.	Defending Women’s Communal Life – Dominican Nuns at Strasbourg (1526) In the Empire's larger cities there was a large number of communities of the principal mendicant orders, especially Franciscans and Dominicans, and particularly of women. A single city might have....
18.	Defense of the Imperial Church – Regensburg Reform (July 7, 1524) The eruption of evangelical agitation in the 1520s challenged the Imperial bishops, who possessed no concepts or structures for collective church reform. While a few secular princes advocated straightforward....
19.	Definition and Demarcation – Conrad Grebel and Others to Thomas Müntzer (September 5, 1524) The early Swiss Anabaptist leader Conrad Grebel (c. 1498-1526) and some other “Swiss Brethren” wrote the following letter to ....
20.	Following Christ's Example in the World – Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418) Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471), a native of the Lower Rhenish region, was the author of The Imitation of Christ, a uniquely popular book that codified the ideals of the movement called “the....
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