Prophecy, Reformation, and Empire in Renaissance Germany

Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of prophetic and apocalyptic writing to Luther and his followers and the ways in which this writing drew on pre-Reformation understandings of future possibilities. In appropriating these Biblical and post-Biblical texts for their own purposes, however, the reformers challenged continuing prophetic traditions in Germany that gave particular weight to reforming Popes and conquering Holy Roman Emperors as signs of God’s eventual victory,  As reformers shifted their focus to new kinds of heroes and new threats, how did they convince themselves and others that they had discovered the proper interpretive key? How were prophetic claims judged when the shared basis for evaluation had crumbled? Did these new divinations rest on or necessitate different standards for scriptural exegesis, observational truth, and human insight?