The Marxist Interpretation of Luther

Abstract

THE MIDDLE AGES HAD DEVELOPED altogether from the raw. They wiped the old civilization, the old philosophy, politics, and jurisprudence off the slate, to begin anew in everything. The only thing they kept from the shattered old world was Christianity and a number of half-ruined towns divested of all civilization. As a consequence, the clergy obtained a monopoly on intellectual education, just as in every primitive stage of development, and education itself became essentially theological. In the hands of the clergy, politics and jurisprudence, much like all other sciences, remained mere branches of theology and were treated in accordance with the principles prevailing in the latter. Church dogmas were also political axioms, and biblical quotations had the validity of law in any court. Even as a special estate of jurists was taking shape, jurisprudence long remained under the patronage of theology. This domination of theology over the entire realm of intellectual activity was at the same time an inevitable consequence of the fact that the church was the all-embracing synthesis and the most general sanction of the existing feudal domination.