ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the tensions within the family caused by Anabaptism, and explores the strategies pursued by individuals and families to preserve the household in the face of this confessional conflict. Attention will be focused on a single geographical area, Tyrol, in which the confessional divide within families often became a geographical one as Anabaptists emigrated to Moravia to join Hutterite communities. The Tyrolean administration wrote to King Ferdinand proposing that all confiscated Anabaptist property enter the government's coffers. Economics played an important role in Anabaptist emigration and in their punishment, but there was much more to the family than an economic unit. More importantly an examination of the ways in which Anabaptists, especially Hutterites, continued to value and preserve their ties with relatives back in Tyrol, and continued to show interest in the disposal of their property and their inheritances, complicates the notion that Anabaptism, in this case the Hutterites, broke completely with their past.
