Martin Luther

MARTIN LUTHER: THE RELUCTANT REVOLUTIONARY
PROF. M. M. NINAN
The rapid growth of the free Reformation Churches all over Europe demanded a convention of
Diet was held in the summer of 1526. The Diet of Speyer or the Diet of Spires (sometimes
referred to as Speyer I) was an Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in 1526 in the Imperial City
of Speyer in present-day Germany. The diet's ambiguous edict resulted in a temporary suspension
of the Edict of Worms and aided the expansion of Protestantism. It unanimously concluded that
every province held the right to live, rule and believe as it
may, in hopes of being answerable only to God. This gave a boost to Protestanism.
The exercise of territorial sovereignty dates from this point, which practically established
separate state churches in the German states of the Holy Roman Empire. And as the Empire was
divided into a large number of sovereign states, there were as many Protestant church
organizations as Protestant states, according to the maxim that "the ruler of the territory is the ruler
of religion within its bounds" (cuius regio, eius religio). The Protestant princes and theologians
prohibited the mass and certain other Roman practices wherever they held power. This started a
power struggle within each state among the Protestants and the Catholic. A virtual war between the
two was in place.
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