The studies united in this volume explore themes of community, politics, religion, gender, and social conflict and accommodation during the first decades of the Reformation movement. Other chapters investigate historiographical themes, especially the interpretation of early modern German history. Two longer chapters address European themes: the historical sociology of early modern societies in terms of legal definitions of status and modern conceptions of economic class; and the difference between central and western European development in a global context. Taken together, the studies explore the transition zone between medieval and modern history in both microhistorical, especially urban and regional, and broadly comparative contexts. Some of the studies are supplementary to the author's books on the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation at Strasbourg, in southern Germany, and in the Holy Roman Empire.
Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Ph.D. (1968) University of Chicago, is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked on Central Europe in the 15th-17th centuries, the
political history of the German Reformation, comparative urban history, and German and European historiography. His publications include: Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555 (Leiden, 1978);
Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450-1550 (Cambridge, 1985) (German Studies Association Book Prize, 1987); Protestant Politics: Jacob Sturm
(1489-1553) and the German Reformation (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1995); The Politics of the German Reformation (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1996) (German translation, Berlin, 1996).