Contenu du sommaire : Luther et la politique

Reformation and Judicialization: the Work of the Public Lawyers on the “Constitution” of the Empire – a Case StudyWhat does causal relationship, if any, stand between the various trends of the Reformation and the changes affecting “Law” during the Early Modern period? Instead of minimizing or finding a way round the many difficulties raised by such complex a matter, the present paper is taking a pragmatic three-steps approach. Firstly, it substantiates the term “judicialization” by considering examples of this phenomenon in the 13th and 16th centuries. Secondly, it highlights the process of “judicialization” and the increasing significance of the Law within post-Reformation societies. Lastly, it examines the “Constitution” of the Empire (Reichsverfassung) and its treatment by Public Law curricula in protestant and catholic universities.

The “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation”: political or religious treatise?
Luther's 1520 Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation is both a political and religious text. Though aiming at reforming the current state of Christianity, it called upon the temporal authorities to do so, given the failure of the clergy. In fact, the whole sphere of human activities needed to be reformed if it was to conform to Christian morality. Luther therefore justified the temporal power from a religious viewpoint and raised it above the spiritual power, though keeping it subordinate to the Scriptures.

Luther on Tolerance
From 1520 to 1525, Luther insisted that one should not use force against heretics but win them over by preaching. Temporal authorities could not coerce anyone into believing though they were allowed to intervene whenever dissenters disrupted public order. Later on, Luther came to admit that they might also punish those who oppose a publicly acknowledged article of faith or preach without having had any specific calling to do so. He convinced himself that only one type of preaching could be carried on within a given territorial unit. Temporal authorities must expel dissenters and only tolerate their cults when privately practiced.

Martin Luther in North America: How It Went Wrong
Protestantism left its imprint on the United States since their origin. Luther's political thought, however, never succeeded in playing a dominant role in American society. Three factors may explain why the Lutheran legacy failed. Firstly, Puritanism preempted Lutheranism on the North-American soil. Secondly, the European Lutherans who flooded America in the 18th and 19th centuries found it difficult to adapt to the local context. Lastly, the Founding Fathers – who did not favor any specific religious persuasion – were deeply influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, most notably by John Locke's views on Reason and Natural Rights.

Luther's political legacy to nineteenth-century French republican thinkers: a controversial inheritanceLuther's historical impact seems so closely intertwined with the political and territorial destiny of modern Germany that one wonders how it was perceived elsewhere, particularly in tumultuous nineteenth-century France. This paper shows that, thanks to such relays as Germaine de Staël and Henri Heine, Luther's aura easily reached the opposite bank of the Rhine. Republican thinkers, in particular, kept emphasizing the part played by the Reformer in the struggle for liberty: spiritual with the Reformation, then political with the Revolution. In this context, Edgar Quinet, Jules Michelet, Louis Blanc or Jean Jaurès acclaimed Luther, the destroyer of millenary traditions, as an emancipator of humankind.

The Lutheran doctrine of the Two Kingdoms within the Kirchenkampf. Theological-political readings of the Sermon on the MountLuther's doctrine of the “two kingdoms”, temporal and spiritual, was the object of an intense political and theological debate in interwar Germany. This paper deals with one of its most crucial moments, when, under the impetus of Karl Barth, members of the Confessing (or Confessional) Church came to grips with the völkish movement of the German Christians at the dawn of the Nazi regime. This struggle gave rise to the first rigorous exegesis of Luther's writings on the subject in Harold Diem's 1938 thesis. The political issues related to the Lutheran interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount are here recalled.

Germanism and national-socialism in the lutheran synods under the Government of Getúlio Vargas (1937-1945)During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lutheran synods settled in Brazil. During the 30' and 40', that is during the “Nationalization Campaign” of the Vargas government followed by the Second World War, the synods had to face such crucial issues as Germanism and National-socialism. The present paper attempts to show how the Brazilian authorities perceived the various positions of the Lutherans on these questions and how they reacted to them.

Henri Fayol and the “industrialization of the State”Early twentieth-century France was rich with views on how to reform the State and its functioning. All intellectual circles joined the movement, including engineers whose ambition was to transfer their scientific rationality to the management of public affairs. Henri Fayol was a civil engineer who is still considered today as one of the founding fathers of management. From 1916 to 1925, he devoted himself to the issue of the “industrialization” of the State, wishing to convince political bodies to apply an industry-originated logic to the management of public affairs.

Purging the people: the cognitive power of medical metaphors in Machiavel
The metaphor of the humors in Machiavelli has been the subject of an important number of studies. Essentially concentrated on his major works, scholars have emphasized that Machiavelli uses this category of medical origin in a context marked by a reflection on institutional forms and the role of conflicts. This article proposes to study the use of this metaphor in a less-studied source: the political correspondence of Machiavelli during the crisis of the Florentine territorial state in the beginning of the 16th century. The goal of this study is double: it aims to present a level of analysis of the body politic relative to the phenomena of opinions which, until now, have escaped critical analysis; it intends to question the residual cognitive value of this metaphor in the light of the recent historiographical debate concerning the nature and the forms of public opinion in pre-modern societies.