Excerpt from Teachers in Germany in the Sixteenth Century: Conditions in Protestant Elementary and Secondary Schools

The Germany of the sixteenth century was a patchwork of states, two or three hundred in number, held loosely together in an empire which was almost entirely lacking in the essentials of a unified government. The states ranged in importance from the castle and village of some insignificant knight to the power ful principalities of the Electors. To the extent that the empire was lacking as an administrative organization, the various smaller units were able to develop something of local and provincial government. Such states as Hesse, the Palatinate, Bavaria, Brandenburg, and both Saxonies had progressed to a stage where they had at least the beginnings of the camera] form of govern ment. The princes had their councils and their own supreme courts of justice, their own systems of finance and coinage and eventually the control of their own churches. While the coun cils were made up of nobles and lawyers who were subservient to their princes, they seem to have been able to give some guid ance to legislation, both civil and ecclesiastical. With the de J velopment of the idea that the religion of a state is that of its prince, it became possible to crystallize the religious movements in the different states and develop a form of ecclesiastical organi zation which had hitherto been impossible.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.