Venice and the Radical Reformation

The Republic of Venice was the only Catholic territory where an Anabaptist community was formed in the 16th century. The history of Venetian Anabaptism, little known in Reformation Studies so far, is at the heart of this book. On the basis of a large amount of archival material Riccarda Suitner reconstructs the lives of the Anabaptists of the Republic and inquisitorial repression they suffered, and analyses the doctrinal specificities of the Radical Reformation of that territory. Venetian events are presented within a broader comparative framework with particular attention to the development of the Reformation in the German states, Switzerland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Transylvania, Tyrol, and the Kingdom of Naples. It will emerge that its Venetian history, too, cannot be ignored for a true understanding of the Radical Reformation as a whole, as well as of many significant developments of the European Reformation.