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Documents - Part III: Section C – Peasants’ War
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1.   Taking Control of Village Religion – Wendelstein (Franconia) (October 19, 1524)
In the southern German lands during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it was common for village communes to establish or demand the right to approve and depose their village priest. In....
2.   Grievances and Demands – The Twelve Articles of the Swabian Peasants (February 27-March 1, 1525)
The document reproduced below was the archetype for the numerous grievance lists drawn up during the German Peasants’ War. The journeyman furrier and lay preacher Sebastian Lotzer drafted these articles....
3.   Grievances and Demands – Thauer and Rettenberg (Tyrol) (May 15, 1525)
The following document contains extracts from a petition submitted by Tyrolean subjects to their prince, Archduke Ferdinand (1503-64), the younger brother of Emperor Charles V and the ruler of the....
4.   Wendel Hipler's Agenda for the "Peasant Parliament" in Heilbronn (May 1525)
In May 1525, leaders and envoys of the various rebel armies were summoned to Heilbronn for a “Peasant Parliament” held under the leadership of Wendel Hipler, a former official of the counts of Hohenlohe....
5.   Friedrich Weigandt’s Draft of an Imperial Reformation (May 18, 1525)
Drafted in May 1525, this imperial reform program was based on an anonymous tract, The Needs of the German Nation [Teutscher Nation notturfft] (1523). Like Wendel Hipler’s agenda, it....
6.   Michael Gaismair’s Territorial Constitution for Tyrol (1526)
Michael Gaismair (1490-1532), formerly an official of the prince-bishop of Brixen/Bressanone, drafted the Tyrolean Constitution in 1526. One of the most significant reform programs of the Peasants’....
7.   The Imperial Diet’s Response to the Peasants’ War, Speyer (August 1526)
Recent scholarship has debunked the oft-repeated myth that the defeat of the insurrection of 1525 put an end to peasant resistance and opened the way for seigneurs to exercise unrestricted control....
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