The Reformation and the Radical Attitude: Luther, Müntzer and Calvin

Abstract

In the introduction we mentioned the role played by theological discourse in the formation of some of the central concepts of modern political theory. In this regard, the intellectual and political landscape crafted in the European Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is crucial. The challenge posed to the Roman Catholic Church by the various Protestant reform movements was not simply theological in character. In the early sixteenth century the Catholic Church still played a central role in Europe, acting as the main force for unity and pacification among the diverse and competing forms of political authority that characterised the late medieval and early modern period. Historically, however, the Church had also promoted division, most famously in the Great Schism of 1054 between the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches and on a number of occasions in medieval Europe when kings and princes contested the papacy’s claims to secular authority. The challenge that was mounted to the Roman Church in the early sixteenth century, then, was not of itself remarkable. The consequences of the Protestant challenge were, however, of incalculable importance for the formation of the modern political system in the West and for the character of modern political theory.