SOURCE: "Agrarian Rebellion," in Rebels and Rulers, 1500-1660, Vol. I, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 175-227.

In the following excerpt, Zagorin argues for the importance of religious pamphlets, such as the Twelve Articles, in inciting the German peasant revolts of the sixteenth century which contributed to the social rebellion of the Protestant Reformation.

The hundreds of articles of grievances put forward in the course of the revolt [German peasant insurrections of the sixteenth century] along with the numerous proposals that emerged looking to freedom, reform, and reconstruction, faithfully reflected the extraordinary political ferment the peasant war aroused. Brief as it was, it stimulated an outburst of ideas and aspirations, rations, a variety of programs, and a hope in new possibilities that were unparalleled in other agrarian rebellions. In its effect on the popular mind it can only be compared with some of the revolutionary civil wars of the early...