The Family of Love 1540-1660

Over forty years after its original publication, Alastair Hamilton has revised and updated his comprehensive study of the heterodox movement known as the Family of Love. Part of the Radical Reformation, it has been a source of fascination to scholars, earning a reputation for antinomianism alongside its association with some of the greatest humanists of the late sixteenth century. They include the philosopher and philologist Justus Lipsius and the greatest typographer of his day, Christophe Plantin. Hamilton studies the careers and the thought of the two main ideologists of the movement and provides a lucid analysis of the ramifications of the Family of Love not only in the Low Countries, but also in France, Germany and England. Extensively researched, Hamilton's detailed study was the first to connect the Family of Love in England with the movement on the continent. His book remains a definitive but readable history of a neglected yet significant moment in the history of the Radical Reformation in Europe.