Reformations in German Histories

The German Reformation and Medieval Thought and Culture

“…59 Its stability depended on well defined parts, wherein the Habsburg emperors strengthened their hold on the imperial office, and princes strengthened their hold on their own rights and possessions. 60 Flacius seamlessly fit this environment. He taught Lutherans that their past was no less medieval or Catholic than that of papal defenders, and he showed how the differentiations of the present were associated through a shared past.…”

“…For example, it has been recently argued that the political history of Germany from 1400 to 1650 may be seen as an attempt to solve two problems, the one having to do with the trans-regional political structure of the Holy Roman Empire and the other having to do with the aspiration for a national organization of the church. 132 This problem-set was evident throughout the fifteenth century, but each of its parts -imperial political structure and ecclesiastical organization -had their own chronologies. With regard to ecclesiastical organization, the effort to build structures that would have produced, in Germany, a more or less national church -as was occurring in France, England, and eventually Spain -accelerated through the conciliar movement in the first decades of the fifteenth century.…”