Compared to other confessional groups from the Reformation era, Lutherans ran rather short on martyrs. Because historians have often treated Lutheran reform as a state-led affair, it might also appear that they were less influenced, theologically, by persecution. Lutherans' monumental collections of persecution accounts, while initially popular, did not capture the enduring lay interest that other confessions– martyrologies and hagiographies enjoyed. As many histories of German popular culture would have it, Lutherans formed their social and ecclesiastical identities not in relation to the self-denial and ascetic bold ness of martyrs but in emulation of Martin and Katharina Luther' abundant domestic life. Parenthood, neighbourliness, hospitality and civic spirit: these were the social values that supposedly set German Lutherans apart from their peers. Heeding Luther's denunciations of pilgrimage and their rulers' concerns for social cohesion, German Lutherans, we are told, readily embraced the quiet virtues of staying at home.

When historians pay attention to the prevalence of exile in Lutheran experience and writing, however, a different picture emerges. Lutherans had no shortage of exiles – neither in the sixteenth century, when imperial forces fought to contain the spread of Lutheranism in the German territories, nor in the seventeenth century, when the Habsburgs became more serious about enforcing religious uniformity in their own family's lands. Exile, likewise, received no shortage of commemoration in Lutheran literature.