Zophy, Jonathan W.

Patriarchal Politics and Christoph Kress (1484-1535) of Nuremberg

1992 0-7734-9605-X
This book examines the impact of the patriarchy and the early Reformation upon the life, family, and career of the warrior-statesman Christoph Kress. Involved in over sixty-five diplomatic missions, he was the only Nuremberg political figure to participate in every Imperial Diet between 1518 and 1532. This first full-length study of Kress takes us inside the politics of Nuremberg and the Holy Roman Empire in the turbulent period of the German Peasants' Revolt and religious fissures of the 1520s and early 1530s. It also provides an intriguing case study of the effects of the Lutheran movement upon one of Germany's greatest cities and one of that community's most prominent merchant families, whose dynamics will be of great interest to scholars of religion, politics, psychology, and history.