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Lucas Osiander (1534-1604) was an influential preacher of the Lutheran orthodoxy. As a Wuerttemberg court preacher and superintendent, he played a central role when the country was established as one of the leading Lutheran forces in the Empire. Osiander preached to a wide audience in a time when sermons were a privileged form of communication and when preachers could address and negotiate the central interests in society. Using confessionalization theory, Sivert Angel studies Osiander´s preaching in its political and theological context and shows how Osiander as a preacher could exert political influence. By analyzing Osiander´s sermons in light of his own homiletic, the author describes how Osiander´s role as a preacher may be traced in his sermons´ rhetoric structures and in his use of theological concepts. The discussion of Osiander´s theory and practice of preaching documents the ways that Osiander´s sermons reinforced the existing political and social order and portrays central aspects of theology and piety in the later sixteenth century.

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