Majestätsbrief

Majestätsbrief (Letter of Majesty), a document issued on 9 July 1609 by the Emperor Rudolf II to the Bohemian estates. It guaranteed the Bohemians the free exercise of religious beliefs (Gewissensfreiheit) without social discrimination and gave the estates the right to erect churches and schools. ‘Defensors’ were to administer the interests of the Protestant communities. The concessions failed to secure for Rudolf the loyalty of the Bohemians (he was deposed in 1611), but, for the Protestant estates, they were a temporary triumph against the measures of the Counter-Reformation (see Gegenreformation). The Letter of Majesty and other concessions made by Rudolf's brother Matthias to Moravia and Hungary succeeded only in shelving the conflict which resulted in the outbreak of the Thirty Years War (see Dreissigjähriger Krieg) in 1618, when a renewed dispute over the interpretation of the terms of the Letter of Majesty led to a revolt in Bohemia which was initially a purely internal conflict. An incident in the Hradschin in Prague (23 May 1618) in which two governors for Matthias (Jaroslav Martinitz and William Slavata) were thrown out of the window by angry Protestant representatives, headed by Count von Thurn, sparked off the armed conflict and is known as the Prager Fenstersturz. The officials survived their rough treatment, falling into the moat, though others say that they landed on a manure heap. The coup d'état was intended as a first step towards the dethronement of Ferdinand (see Ferdinand II), whose election as hereditary king the Bohemians by now bitterly regretted. After the defeat of the Bohemian ‘Winter King’ (see Friedrich V von der Pfalz) in 1620, Ferdinand (since 1619 emperor) demonstrated his future policy in Bohemia by literally tearing up the Letter of Majesty.