ABSTRACT
In the 'Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation' the Reformation took hold rapidly and with greater early popular support than in other European countries. The imperial estates – princes, free cities and nobles who stood between the emperor and the ordinary nobles, townsfolk and peasants – enjoyed a partial autonomy which enabled them to introduce the Reformation although Emperor Charles V had condemned Luther's ideas at Worms. During the previous century, and especially after 1500, the Empire experienced more serious peasant uprisings and urban social conflicts than elsewhere. In the Lutheran sacrament of the Eucharist, the faith of the recipient was essential, so that the rite was not a sacrifice but a thanksgiving; lay people were now allowed to receive both bread and wine. The caution of city magistrates meant that urban reformations were often long drawn out. Urban 'South German Reformed' influences disappeared, albeit to re-emerge in several principalities after 1555.
