The Fifteen Confederates

The Fifteen Confederates was published anonymously in the fall of 1521, shortly after Martin Luther's hearing at the Diet of Worms and subsequent disappearance. The fifteen pamphlets that make up the book address religious, social, economic, and political challenges facing the German people. Their author, Johann Eberlin von Gunzburg, subsequently became one of the most prolific and popular pamphleteers of the German Reformation. As an important contribution to the pamphlet war that accompanied the beginnings of the Reformation in Germany, The Fifteen Confederates provides us a valuable window on the aspirations and dreams that accompanied Luther's initial calls for reform of the church and society.

Eberlin's pamphlets relate to Luther's idea of reforming aspects of the Catholic Church, the papacy, monasteries, parishes, clerics, and rituals. . . . This volume is an essential work for those interested in early German Reformation religion and culture.
--Richard G. Cole, Professor of History emeritus, Luther College, Iowa

The Fifteen Confederates takes English-speaking students of the German Reformation to the heart of the early, popular movement for evangelical reform. Its tracts present a blistering critique of the corruptions in both the church and secular society, as well as the idealistic--even utopian--hopes for a brighter future. . . . [Dipple's] translations are both accurate and readable, and his explanations of difficult terms and passages are illuminating.
--Michael Baylor, Professor of History, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania


Geoffrey Dipple is Professor of History at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His research interests include Reformation anticlericalism and the Radical Reformation. He has published widely in the history of the Reformation, including Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation (1996) and Just as in the Time of the Apostles: Uses of History in the Radical Reformation (2005).