ABSTRACT
In the present chapter we shall consider Luther’s increasing engagement with German society and its problems in the period following the Diet of Worms in 1521. We shall review the aftermath of the Diet, focusing on Luther’s voluntary protective detention between May 1521 and March 1522 in the Wartburg Castle, where he continued a campaign of extensive publishing and embarked on a translation of the New Testament. We shall go on to consider the way he coped with the radicalisation, in Wittenberg, of his own proposed religious reforms. After that we shall review his increasing involvement in politics, including a milestone in the evolution of Luther’s thinking about the state, his work ‘On Secular Authority’ (1523). This will be followed by a study of his attitude to the Jewish people, in the work ‘That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew’ (1523).
