Michael Driedger NB: This is the first draft of a review that appeared in European History Quarterly (1998). Werner O. Packull, Hutterite Beginnings: Communitarian Experiments during the Reformation, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-5048-7, 1995; xi + 440 pp. Hutterite Beginnings gives a detailed, vivid account of the varied Anabaptist refugee communities which gathered in Moravia in the late 1520s and early 1530s and held material goods in common. The Hutterites, today best known for their strict and reclusive way of life in rural North America, were the only one of these communities to survive beyond the first half of the sixteenth century. The book is an important contribution to the historiography of early Anabaptism as well as the Reformation in southern German-speaking territories, especially the South Tyrol. Packull has already done his fair share to shape the direction of current debates in these fields. For example, in 1975 he, James Stayer and Klaus Deppermann published the influential essay 'From Monogenesis to Polygenesis,' in which they identified three main streams of early Reformation Anabaptism: North German-Dutch, South German-Austrian, and Swiss. Each regional culture had its own unique origins, sets of leaders and theological emphases. This amounted to a revision of North American Mennonite historiography, in which contributors declared a select group of Swiss reformers to be the founders of a New Testament-oriented, nonresistant, supposedly normative brand of Anabaptism and, by extension, Mennonitism. In his dissertation, Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 15251531 (1977), Packull elaborated on an aspect of the polygenesis model. With Hutterite Beginnings he advances discussions about early Anabaptism in at least two new regards. First, he provides a strongly contextualized interpretation of the development of early Swiss Anabaptist vernacular biblicism. Second, he shows that, while heuristically preferable to older theories, the polygenesis model should not be applied too rigidly, for Moravian Anabaptism was a hybrid form of South German-Austrian and Swiss regional cultures. Packull's work also provides further evidence for two already existing historiographical positions. First, he elaborates on the character of the Reformation in the South Tyrol. Like in other Germanspeaking territories Anabaptism in the South Tyrol, introduced there in 1527, represented a continuation by other means of the anticlerical, reformist programme of the Peasants' War. But 'Unlike in other Germanspeaking territories Anabaptism in the Tyrol came to represent the major Reform orientation, and after its demise no popular alternative emerged' (161). Second, as he argued in his dissertation, he shows that scholars cannot draw a hard and fast ideal-typical distinction between Anabaptists and spiritualists, especially in the early years of Anabaptist reforming movements. This is especially but not only so for Silesian Anabaptism as exemplified by leading figures like Clemens Adler, Oswald Glaidt and Gabriel Ascherham. In addition to an historiographical introduction, a three-part appendix, and extensive notes and bibliography, the book consists of twelve chapters divided equally into two parts. The first part is a history of groups now largely forgotten, namely, the Austerlitz Brethren, Philipites (led by Philip Plener) and Gabrielites (led by Gabriel Driedger, Review of Packull, page 2 Ascherham). The membership base of these groups was made up of refugees escaping persecution in other parts of the Empire and its bordering territories. Each group was able to survive in Moravia until 1535 because of the relatively accommodating policies of the local nobility. The practice of community of goods which the three shared was in large part shaped by a way of thinking about congregational organization transmitted from Switzerland to Moravia. In short, a communitarian way of life emerged in Moravia amid interactions between South German-Austrian and Swiss Anabaptist refugees. The second part is about the earliest years of the Hutterites, who grew out of this communitarian, refugee milieu. In 1533 a faction sympathetic to the reformer Jacob Hutter claimed the upper hand in an Anabaptist community at Auspitz, which itself consisted of a breakaway group from Austerlitz. Hutter and most of his closest associates and supporters came from the Puster Valley in the South Tyrol. Packull writes about life in underground networks in the Tyrol, the reaction of the local population to the Anabaptists, the little-documented role of women among the Hutterites, the brutal programme of suppression coordinated by Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria, the resulting shift of Tyrolese Anabaptist leaders and adherents to Moravia, missionary expeditions back to their homeland, and the capture and martyrdom of many leaders (including Hutter). A major source for Packull's history is the collections of letters, many smuggled out of prisons, in which believers in the Tyrol told their coreligionists in Moravia about their suffering and their faith. These letters played an important role in forming a strong sense of Hutterite identity. The book ends with a chapter on the demise of the Gabrielites and the Philipites. Packull's careful evaluation of available primary sources, concern to place ideas and events in historical context, and willingness to moderate while not abandoning the polygenesis model has resulted in a book of high quality.