Until the impact of natural law jurisprudence and the emergence of a positive public law in the second third of the seventeenth century, the role of civic humanism in German political discourse was shaped by three basic developments. From the 1460s, Cicero's De officiis became a prime source to describe the nature and duties of government in general. The office of magistrates was thus described not least in terms of the virtues of Cicero's citizens. Printed in 1465 in Mainz, De officiis was among the first books popularised by the new printing press (Dyck 1996: 41). Germany was second only to Italy in the number of incunabula Latin editions of Cicero (Jones 1998: 18) and clearly ahead of France and the Netherlands. The Lutheran reformation rather reinforced this influence. The central figure for the combination of Lutheranism and humanism in Germany was Philip Melanchthon, professor of Greek at Wittenberg University (1497–1560; Scheible 1997: 90–5). He commented extensively on De officiis and used the Lutheran distinction of law and gospel to elaborate the meaning of law and civil order with respect to classical sources, primarily Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. He defended Cicero's emphasis on the connection of eloquence and wisdom (Maurer 1967–9: II, 87–9) and treated his account of the Christian law of nature primarily in terms of classical philosophy (Maurer 1967–9: I, 295).

Accounts of government and magistrates in the Empire were first and foremost developed in towns and by townsmen.