Based on original sources, this revisionist work is the first new narrative account of the German Reformation to appear in more than half a century. This reexamination is based on the recent liberation of premodern European history from its long domination by the idea of the nation-state and on the recognition of the Reformation as a social movement.

This perspective enables Professor Brady to present a new interpretation of the impact of the Protestant Reformation on the political culture and government of the Holy Roman Empire.

The particular approach of Protestant Politics is to map the collision of the relatively unified Protestant movement with the dispersed, multilayered structure of authority and power in the late medieval Roman Empire. The narrative thread, which holds together the story's levels (local, provincial, regional, and imperial), is the career of Jacob Sturm of Strasbourg: the leading Protestant urban politician of the era.

The rhythm of his career - from a heritage of local autonomy through the great Peasants' War of 1525 to the transregional Protestant alliance (1531-47) and then back again to the local and provincial politics of the 1550s - mirrors the political career of German Protestantism from its explosive beginnings and continuing expansion to its eventual defeat.

This process, shaped by the peculiar political structures and traditions of the Empire - not the theology of Martin Luther - is responsible for German Protestantism's failure to develop a revolutionary potential similar to those of the French, English, and Netherlandish Protestant movements.