The political and religious turmoil of seventeenth century Europe appears in a strange new light in this volume, which explores the life and doctrines of the infamous German barber surgeon and prophet, Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil (1595-1661). Inspired by an unstable alchemy of family tragedy and a corpus of dissenting religious writings, Gifftheil stalked Europe''s battlefields, petitioning kings, princes, and emperors to end the warfare endemic on the continent.Convinced that all war was prompted by ''false prophets''-by which Gifftheil meant the clergy of Europe''s Christian confessions-he pleaded with rulers to abjure the counsel of their advisors and institute instead a godly peace. Then, in 1635, Gifftheil reinvented himself by taking up his sword as -God''swarrior,- embarking on a quest to recruit an army of the righteous and wage a holy war in Europe and to institute a divine peace.Prophecy, Madness, and Holy War in Early Modern Europe uses new manuscript and print sources from a
