The present volume offers the first comprehensive study of Anabaptism in Flanders in the sixteenth century. Based upon a massive use of the sources, it is thorough, completely objective and fair, and exhaustive. The picture it presents is a new one in its evidence of the surprising extent of the spread of the Anabaptist movement geographically, as well as its depth and tenacity in the face of severest persecution. That Anabaptism persisted in Flanders almost a half century beyond 1600 was not clearly known before. That, apart from certain aberrations at the very beginning, Flemish Anabaptism was completely peaceful, nonresistant, and evangelical, largely after a pattern of Menno Simons, is fully demonstrated. A major gap in our knowledge and understanding of continental Anabaptism has now been closed in an exceptionally competent fashion by a master in the field. A. L. E. VERHEYDEN was Laureate of the Belgian Royal Academy, and one of his nation's leading authorities on the sixteenth century Reformation. His 1949 history of the Reformation in the Southern Netherlands is the definitive work in its field. Dr. Verheyden, in the course of his lifetime, published numerous volumes on the history of the Anabaptists and Reformation in Europe. In all his works, Dr. Verheyden shows himself a master of the sources and a sound interpreter of the history of the sixteenth century.
