From Charismatic Leadership to Institution The Reformation Significance of Making Martin Luther into a Monument

Luther's authority underwent a range of transformations. He ascended rapidly from a professor in Wittenberg to the leader of an international reformational movement. There were of course other leading figures in the reforming movement. While these other figures relativized the apparent omnipresence of the Wittenberg reformer, they did not fundamentally put his authority in question. In fact, what happened was the opposite, a tendency to emphasize Luther's importance more and more through false veneration. Some pushed the reformer into a central, nearly unassailable position, a process observable even in his lifetime for which Eike Wolgast coined the concept of "monumentalizing" or "monument-making." With the help of Max Weber, Luther's ascendancy is a comprehensible socio-religious process. Once charismatic leaders establish their authority among large masses of people, their authority tends to be institutionally regularized.