Introduction

In studying Protestant political thought, one enters into a cacophony of debates about politics, law, and religion. In this first volume of A Global Sourcebook in Protestant Political Thought, we put the spotlight on the period from Luther’s rise in 1517 to the mid-seventeenth century. Around 200 sources provide a rich window into a period of early modern history, known as the Reformation, which saw political authorities and church hierarchies challenged and defended by scholars, clerics, and laypeople. Even as our own time is fraught with deep disagreement and political polarisation, so too was early modern Europe, and we might read it in the anxieties, uncertainties, hopes, and expectations that the sources vividly express.