The Republic of Venice was the only Catholic territory where an Anabaptist community was formed in the 16th century. On the basis of a large amount of archival material the author 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. Riccarda Suitner presents the events 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.
The history at the heart of this book is one as yet little known in Reformation Studies: the history of Venetian Anabaptism.