ABSTRACT
Within the many reformations which followed Luther’s we can distinguish two main types: the radical reformers and those who carried through their task supported by the secular authorities. The radicals, Anabaptists for the most part, also made a bid for secular power, but after their failure at M unster was followed by equal failure at Strassburg, such radicals either withdrew into a rejection o f the world or split into a myriad o f sects, each with its own leadership. However, this radicalism did not vanish. In the England o f Oliver Cromwell it made one more bid for secular power - and failed again. With its own doctrine o f ‘election’ for those infused with the ‘holy spirit’, it came to provide a revolu tionary dynamic for the lower classes o f the population, keeping up the role it had played during the peasant wars.
