[Editorial note: The following excerpt is from Part IV of Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History, which is entitled ‘The Germanic World’. Parts I to III deal with the Oriental World, the Greek World, and the Roman World respectively. In his brief introduction to Part IV, Hegel argues that the Germanic people are the carriers of the Christian principle in Western civilisation, and that the Christian principle is constitutive of freedom in the ‘new age’. This principle develops in the Germanic world in three distinct stages, the first of which stretches from the fall of Rome to the time of Charlemagne, and the second (i.e. the Middle Ages) from Charlemagne to the Reformation. The latter stage, Hegel argues, was characterised by Catholic corruption and by the Church's denial of the right of conscience, and a rigid separation was introduced between priesthood and laity and between spiritual and secular worlds. Most important of all, however, he contends that the ideals of Catholicism, and in particular those of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, rendered religion incompatible with Sittlichkeit, especially in its three essential moments of family, civil society, and the state.

In the extract translated here, Hegel discusses the third stage in the development of the Christian principle among the Germanic peoples. He attempts to show how the Reformation inaugurated a movement that led to the recovery of the realm of Sittlichkeit for Christianity. […]