ABSTRACT
When it became clear that the earliest Protestants were not going to be able to secure the reforms they wanted within the structure of the Roman Catholic Church, they began creating new ecclesiastical institutions. To give these institutions shape, they drafted new laws or ordinances, which in effect became constitutions for reformed churches. These ecclesiastical ordinances were normally first drafted by a clergyman for a city, and then adopted, usually with a few revisions and amendments, by the city’s government. Many of these ordinances were later revised and extended to cover broader areas, an entire province, even a kingdom.
