Martin Luthers Reformation und das Recht

Abstract

Martin Luthers Reformation and the Law. Luther's statements about the church, ecclesiastical power and political government had deep impact on canon law, the law of the Holy Roman Empire and protestant church law. They are based on Luther's doctrines about justification, law and gospel, the distinctions between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world and spiritual and secular power. Luther observed these theological positions with great consequence and continuity, but drew different conclusions from them according to the rapid change of circumstances in his time. With his writings he reacted to definite deficiencies - that's why they can only be understood by considering the occasion, the reason and the aim of their making. And they are strongly influenced by the legal framework of the early modern age. They were statements on various conflicts between Emperor and pope, pope and council, Emperor and imperial estates, ingeniously intertwined by Protestant estates of the empire and their lawyers directing/ed them against the Catholics. Thus the Reformation was defended with the help of the/those legal instruments which were/had been introduced by the reform of the empire only one generation before.