e spiritual experience" of Martin Luther and to circumstances in the Holy Roman Empire that gave him the chance to mount a bold challenge to Rome and to the Emperor Charles V "without being immediately silenced for his heresy" (Maland 84). The Reformation first took hold in the free imperial cities of Germany and Switzerland. There were approximately 65 such municipalities and in the early sixteenth century "they were engaged in what seemed to them to be a life-and-death struggle with higher princely or territorial authority" which made them receptive to the reordering of society that seemed to be inherent in the freedom claims of Luther and later reformers (Ozment 9). The rising middle classes in such towns were no more appalled by church abuses than was the Emperor himself. But Charles V was "surrounded by imperceptive advisors" and failed to use Luther's immediate popularity as a tool to leverage reforms from the papacy and "to reconstruct the German church before it broke asunder" (Dickens, Reformation 62). Because of the breadth of his inh
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