ABSTRACT
However, for the German princes, this particular increment of power (a hitherto jointly ruling class had dropped away and they had inherited its property) was a most powerful means of asserting their liberty vis-à-vis the emperor and the Empire. What if in the fifteenth century the great French vassals had possessed something like that against Louis XI? And thus Myconius is able to write to Calvin from Basel in 1542 about the ‘pestilential dogma of the laymen: Senatus ecclesia est’ [the civil government is the church].
