Luther the Lawyer: The Lutheran Reformation of Law, Politics, and Society
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LUTHER THE LAWYER:
THE LUTHERAN REFORMATION
OF LAW, POLITICS, AND
SOCIETY
JOHN WITTE JR.'
Abstract: The Lutheran Reformation transformed not only theology
and the church but law and the state as well. Beginning in the 1520s,
Luther joined up with various jurists and political leaders to craft
ambitious legal reforms of church, state, and society on the strength of
the new Protestant theology. These legal reforms were defined and
defended in hundreds of monographs, pamphlets, and sermons
published by Luther and his many followers from the 1520s onward.
They were refined and routinized in hundreds of new reformation
ordinances promulgated by German polities that converted to the
Lutheran cause. By the time of the Peace of Augsburg (1555) the
imperial law that temporarily settled the constitutional order of
Germany the Lutheran Reformation had brought fundamental
changes to theology and law, to church and state, marriage and family,
education and charity.
Keywords: Church, State, Law, Politics, Marriage, Education, Charity,
Two Kingdoms, Natural Law, Positive Law, Equity, Criminal Law,
Punishment, Uses of the Law, Legal Reformations, Church Ordinances
Introduction
The Reformation that Martin Luther unleashed in Germany 500 years
ago began as a loud call for freedom freedom of the church from the
1 This article is a distillation and update of John Witte, Jr., Law and
Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002) [hereater LP]. For other recent overviews,
see Martin Heckel, Martin Luthers Reformation und das Recht (Tiibingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2016); Mathias Schmoeckel, Das Recht der Reformation
(Tiibingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Virpi Miknen, ed., Lutheran Reformation
and the Law (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution II:
The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ljusclr178&div=6&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Luther the Lawyer: The Lutheran Reformation of Law, Politics, and Society
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