German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650

Abstract

This book studies the connections between the political reform of the Holy Roman Empire and the German lands around 1500 and the sixteenth-century religious reformations, both Protestant and Catholic. It argues that the character of the political changes (dispersed sovereignty, local autonomy) prevented both a general reformation of the Church before 1520 and a national reformation thereafter. The resulting settlement maintained the public peace through politically structured religious communities (confessions), thereby avoiding further religious strife and fixing the confessions into the Empire's constitution. The Germans' emergence into the modern era as a people having two national religions was the reformation's principal legacy to modern Germany.

Causes and consequences of the Protestant Reformation

“…This reform aimed to establish central taxing authority and centralizing judicial, administrative, and military institutions. In practice, imperial reformers probably could do no better than forge a compromise between an active imperial policy pursued through the annual Diets at the center and a transition toward stronger territorial states at the regional level (Brady 2009). Although the Empire itself proved durable and some of the institutional changes took hold, the general failure of imperial reform in the face of concerted opposition from selfgoverning territories and princely states meant that the HRE failed to follow other monarchies (France, Spain, England) in centralizing power, eliminating liens and intermediate levels of sovereignty, and exercising authority over the Church.…”

State Capacity and Public Goods: Institutional Change, Human Capital, and Growth in Early Modern Germany

“…The reformists moved to eliminate clerical tax exemptions and economic privileges, promoting economic inclusion at the local level. 11 More generally, reformers called for moral renewal within cities (Moeller, 1972), argued that biblical authority was paramount over and above the authority of existing Catholic Church institutions (Brady, 2009), and were frequently anti-clerical (Dykema and Oberman, 1993).…”

“…Historians (Eisenstein, 1980;Brady, 2009) and economists (Rubin, 2014) argue that the printing press technology shifted the supply of Reformist ideas. Recent research argues that the diffusion of Protestantism in the media was driven by competition in the use of printing technology rather than technology per se (Dittmar and Seabold, 2015).…”

“…and Church authorities (Dittmar and Seabold, 2015;Whaley, 2012;Brady, 2009). When the ideas of the Reformation swept across German-speaking Europe, institutional changes in public goods provision at the city-level were driven by the interaction between these ideas and local determinants of demand and political mobilization (Cameron, 1991;Scribner, 1979).…”

“…We do, however, build on and extend research on the role of religion in the development of European states in the historical literature (Whaley, 2012;Brady, 2009;Lindemann, 2010;Roeck, 1999;Gorski, 2003). settings to shape fundamental changes in governance in European history. 8 Third, we contribute to the literature on persistence Robinson, 2001, 2005a).…”