Patriarchal Politics and Christoph Kress 1484-1535 of Nuremberg (STUDIES IN GERMAN THOUGHT AND HISTORY)

This book examines the impact of the patriarchy and the early Reformation upon the life, family, and career of the warrior-statesman Christopher Kress of Nuremberg. Involved in over 65 diplomatic missions, he was the only Nuremberg political figure to participate in every Imperial Diet between 1518 and 1532. This study of Kress takes us inside the politics of Nuremberg and the Holy Roman Empire in the turbulent period of the German Peasants' Revolt and religious fissures of the 1520s and early 1530s. It also provides a case study of the effects of the Lutheran movement upon one of Germany's greatest cities and one of that community's most prominent merchant families, whose dynamics will be of interest to scholars of religion, politics, psychology, and history.