Germany during Luther days
AT the close of the fifteenth and the dawn of the sixteenth centuries the Holy Roman Empire was little more than a German power. It was composed of a number of virtually sovereign states, principalities, and free cities--each with its own diet, representative assembly, senate, or council; each with its elector, prince, or mayor at the head of all of which was an emperor, chosen for life by the electoral rulers within the bounds of the empire, with an Imperial Diet composed of various representatives from all parts of the empire. The imperial revenues, so far as the emperor personally was concerned, were not more than those of a wealthy individual; and the empire's hold on outlying districts was so weak that it is difficult to tell whether some such lands belonged to it or not. Switzerland, rather than pay Maximilian the imperial tax, secured its freedom with the sword. Italy was practically lost in the Hohenstaufen period. The emperors were stripped of almost all their territorial property, and were left without a single city or a single castle belonging to them as emperors.
In the German Reformation, Luther was the chief actor, and up to the Diet of Worms, in 1521. He was born at Eisleben, November 10, 1483.
Luther asserts that the temporal power is a fellow-member of the Christian body, and although it has a bodily work, it is nevertheless of spiritual estate. In this appeal, and elsewhere as well, he makes a clear distinction-- between legitimate and illegitimate, between constitutional and unconstitutional administration and government, declaring that these may be open to question, investigation, and correction. It is sufficient at this point to note that he maintains that the state is a necessity to man, that it has existed from the......
