History of the Bernese Anabaptists
- Author: Ernst Müller and John A. Gingerich
- SKU: 2332
- ISBN:
- Our Price:
$29.95
-
Description:
504 pages, hard cover, dust jacket, more than a dozen illustrations, maps, photos; 6" x 9", new 3,036 entry Every-Name index. Pathway Publishers 2010.
This is a superb translation of Ernst Müller's 1894 classic Geschichte der Bernischen Täufer or History of the Bernese Anabaptists. Never before translated from the archaic German in which Herr Müller wrote, its contents have been available before now only to the small number of American scholars who both can read German and can deal with the old printed Fraktur Schriften. Müller, a Reformed minister in Langnau im Emmental, not only included descriptions of Anabaptist beliefs and actions, but clear descriptions of the actions of the Bernese government and of the Anabaptists themselves. He included detailed lists of Anabaptists prisoners, congregations, leaders, and families and lengthy accounts of the Anabaptist movement from before the Reformation to well into the 19th century. Müller covered the splits within the various Anabaptist groups, the moves to the Jura and to Holland, the Palatinate, America, and elsewhere. Not only does this translation make all of the data easily accessible in English, the new index (the 1894 book had no index) alone makes this a must-have.
This pivotal work meshes well with other Picton Press books on the subject, such as Jeremy Bangs' Letters on Toleration: Dutch Aid to Persecuted Swiss and Palatine Mennonites 1615-1699 and Lewis Rohrbach's The 1710 Swiss and German Settlers of New Bern, North Carolina (contained as Vol 2 in the three-volume work by Henry Z Jones and Lewis Bunker Rohrbach, Even More Palatine Families). Both of these, and other titles on the subject, such as Brigitte Bachmann-Geiser's Amish: The Way of Life of the Amish in Berne, Indiana, are included here on Picton Press' web site.
No researcher interested in the history of the Amish, Mennonites, or other Anabaptist groups should be without this book. Historians following the course of the 17th and 18th century religious migrations into America also will find this a fruitful source.
This is one of my personal favorites.
