Luther's Legacy : The Thirty Years War and the Modern Notion of 'State' in the Empire, 1530s to 1790s (Hardcover)

Introduction: Luther's legacy and the 'German' notion of state; 1. Meinecke's riddle: reason of state and Reformation prudence; 2. Royal rights and princely dynasties in late medieval and early modern Germany, fourteenth to early seventeenth centuries; 3. Civil order and princely rights, 1450s to 1580s: the making of the elements; 4. The transformation of ideas on order and the rise of the 'fatherland', 1580s to 1630s: the re-ordering of the elements; 5. The challenge of 'reason of state', 1600s to 1650s; 6. The catastrophe of war and the collapse of relations between princes and vassals; 7. The re-establishing of compromise and the new use of the elements: Seckendorff, Pufendorf and the dissemination of the new concept of 'state'; 8. Readings of despotism: the attack on 'war-despotism' between Bodin and Montesquieu; Conclusion: Luther's legacy: the 'Germaness' of the modern notion of 'state'; Bibliography; Index.