ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the social processes by which individuals became clerics. Clerics and city councilors were the main local authorities in the religious arena. The Leipzig clergy had its own organization, the City Ministry, which met regularly and usually acted as a unified group. Clerics and Leipzig inhabitants had more informal contacts as well. Leipzig's city councilors shared much with their peers around Western and Central Europe. During the Reformation, councilors had taken over many duties and responsibilities from the Catholic Church. The language of covenant and reciprocity masked the loss of most of Leipzig inhabitants' formal rights in government. Inhabitants also had access to less formal means of holding councilors, and clerics, to their proclaimed norms, or at least making them cautious about violating them. Clerics' duties, rights, and institutional organization distinguished them from other individuals and groups.
