themselves contemporaneously in other parts of Europe; but in Germany the change was more sudden than elsewhere, and was complicated by special political circumstances. The political and military functions of that for the mediaeval polity of Germany, so important class, the knighthood, or lower nobility, had by this time become practically obsolete, mainly owing to the changed conditions of warfare. But yet the class itself was numerous, and still, nominally at least, possessed of most of its old privileges and authority. The extent of its real power depended, however, upon the absence or weakness of a central power, whether Imperial or State-territorial. The attempt to reconstitute the centralized power of the empire under Maximilian, of which the _Reichsregiment_ was the outcome, had, as we have seen, not proved successful. Its means of carrying into effect its own decisions were hopelessly inadequate. In 1523 it was already weakened, and became little more than a "survival" after the Reichstag held at Nuernberg in 1524. Thus this body, which had been called into existence at the instance of the most powerful estates of the empire, was "shelved" with the practically unanimous consent of those who had been instrumental in creating it. But if the attempt at Imperial centralization had failed, the force of circumstances tended partly for this very reason to favour State-territorial centralization. The aim of all the territorial magnates, the higher members of the Imperial system, was to consolidate their own princely power within the territories owing them allegiance. This desire played a not unimportant part in the establishment of the Reformation in certain parts of the country--for example, in Wuertemberg, and in the northern lands of East Prussia which were subject to the Grand Master of the Teutonic knights. The time was at hand for the transformation of the mediaeval feudal territory, with its local jurisdictions and its ties of service, into the modern bureaucratic state, with its centralized administration and organized system of salaried functionaries subject to a central authority. The religious movement inaugurated by Luther met and was absorbed by all these elements of change. It furnished them with a religious _flag_, under cover of which they could work themselves out. This was necessary in an age when the Christian theology was unquestioningly accepted in one or another form by wellnigh all men, and hence entered as a practical belief into their daily thoughts and lives. The Lutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the Peasants' War of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all the revolutionary elements of the time. Up to the last-mentioned date it gathered revolutionary force year by year. But this was the turning point.