This important document has a strong religious colouring, the political and economic demands of the peasants being led up to and justified by Biblical quotations.
They all turn on the customary grievances of the time.

The "Twelve Articles" remain throughout the chief Bill of Rights of the South German peasantry, though there were other versions of the latter current in certain districts.

What was said before concerning the local sporadic movements which had been going en for a generation previously applies equally to the great uprising of 1525.

The rapidity with which the ideas represented by the movement, and in consequence the movement itself, spread, is marvellous.

By the middle of April it was computed that no less than 300,000 peasants, besides necessitous townsfolk, were armed and in open rebellion.