ABSTRACT
The Protestants called for a return to the origins of Christianity and invoked the idea of man’s fundamental sinfulness. Yet the fact that ideological revolt itself was now legitimate, together with one of its key concepts, namely ‘justification by faith’ (i.e. that the basis of religious belief was not membership of the Church per se, but having the right personal relationship with God), meant that the beliefs held by the Reformers could themselves be questioned. Certain groups began to take the principles and aims of the Reformers to extreme conclusions. They expressed these in a variety of political, social and religious beliefs and practices. This is known as the Radical Reformation, consisting chiefly of three broad groupings: the Maccabeans, the Spiritualists or Mystics, and (the largest grouping) the Anabaptists. The Radicals all rejected the links Luther, Calvin and Zwingli made between Church and state; they demanded a return to the apostolic age (the days of the early Church), a religion based on inward authority and not on external coercion, no compromises with Rome, and the radical reorganization of social life. The Maccabeans expressed this by turning to military activity and emphasized the imminent End of Days; the Mystics, for their part, engaged in theological speculation and attempted to divorce man from society and history.
