The Catholic Church maintained itself especially in the South of Germany, and the official Reformation took on a definitely aristocratic character.
According to Baumann (_Akten, Vorwort_, v, vi), the true soul of the movement of 1525 consisted in the notion of "Divine justice," the principle "that all relations, whether of political, social, or religious nature, have got to be ordered according to the directions of the 'Gospel' as the sole and exclusive source and standard of all justice." The same writer maintains that there are three phases in the development of this idea, according to which he would have the scheme of historical investigation subdivided.

In Upper Swabia, says he, "Divine justice" found expression in the well-known "Twelve Articles," but here the notion of a political reformation was as good as absent.
In the second phase, the "Divine justice" idea began to be applied to political conditions.

In Tyrol and the Austrian dominions, he observes, this political side manifested itself in local or, at best, territorial patriotism.

It was only in Franconia that all territorial patriotism or "particularism" was shaken off and the idea of the unity of the German peoples received as a political goal.

The Franconian influence gained over the Wuertembergers to a large extent, and the plan of reform elaborated by Weigand and Hipler for the Heilbronn Parliament was the most complete expression of this second phase of the movement.
The third phase is represented by the rising in Thuringia, and especially in its intellectual head, Thomas Muenzer.