Peace of Augsburg

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Enacted by the imperial diet (the general assembly of the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire) at Augsburg in 1555, the Religious Peace was the most significant law created in the Holy Roman Empire between the Golden Bull of 1356 and the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. These three laws formed the empire's constitution until 1803. On 25 September 1555 at Augsburg, the imperial diet approved twenty-four paragraphs to govern the status of the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg and its adherents until such date as the religious schism might be settled. The Religious Peace, which aimed to neutralize the danger of war that arose from the schism, governed official relations between the Catholic and Protestant imperial Estates until the opening of the Thirty Years' War in 1618. It was renewed with modifications by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

The Peace transferred the ius reformandi ("right of reformation") from the imperial to the territorial and municipal levels by means of a principle, first proclaimed by the Diet of Speyer in 1526, that until the church could settle the schism, each ruler should act in a way such that he would be responsible to God and the emperor. In 1586 Joachim Stephan (1544–1623), a Greifswald law professor, summarized this principle in a famous phrase, "whose the regime, his the religion" (cuius regio, eius religio). The Estates, the emperor's direct subjects, were to enjoy this right, which allowed them to force dissenting subjects to conform or emigrate, with four exceptions: (1) Calvinists, Anabaptists, and other dissenters were excluded from the Peace's terms and protection; (2) in imperial free cities where both religions were practiced, confessional parity in the regime was to be preserved and the right of each to exercise its religion assured; (3) if converted to the Protestant religion, ecclesiastical princes (bishops, abbots, abbesses) were forbidden to enforce the right of reformation on their temporal subjects, and they had to resign their offices (Ecclesiastical Reservation); (4) Protestant nobles and burghers in the temporal lands of ecclesiastical princes might continue to practice their religion (Ferdinandine Declaration). The Protestant Estates never formally recognized the third exception, which, if enforced, would have prohibited the conversion of episcopal and abbatial sees and lands to their faith. The Catholics did not recognize the fourth exception, which they considered a gross violation of the right of reformation confirmed to them by the Peace. Two other laws of 1555 restored the Empire's supreme court (the Imperial Chamber Court) and reformed the Imperial Circles, regional administrative organs for police, financial, and military affairs.

The Religious Peace was successful within limits. For sixty or more years it withstood pressures from the religious wars that erupted in the 1560s in France and in the Netherlands, as well as from the rising confessional tensions caused by the Calvinist challenge to Lutheranism since the 1560s and the revival of Catholicism since 1580. These tensions caused a cessation of the diet after 1613 and crippled the Chamber Court and the Circles, the chief agencies for enforcing the Religious Peace. A series of violent incidents—Protestant attempts on the sees of Cologne and Strasbourg between 1583 and 1595 and provocations by both sides in the free cities—made clear that the two principal exceptions to the Religious Peace remained unsettled.

The Peace of Westphalia, a pair of treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, restored the provisions of the Religious Peace with two important modifications: the Reformed (Calvinist) confession was included as a third licit religion; and princes could no longer force dissenting subjects to emigrate. The reform of the diet into a continuously sitting institution (1663), the suspension of majority rule in religious matters in favor of negotiations between two confessional caucuses of Estates (itio in partes), and the restoration of the Imperial Chamber Court at Wetzlar greatly reduced the religious schism as a source of public contention. The 10,500 Lutherans who in 1730–1731 left the archbishop of Salzburg's lands rather than conform to the Catholic religion, were the Empire's last (illegally expelled) religious exiles.

While an important conclusion to the first phase of the Reformation, the Religious Peace could not be enforced to a degree sufficient to spare the empire a second religious war. Even for its first quarter century, the Peace's importance as a symbol of a liberal irenicism, later destroyed by the Catholic Counter-Reformation, has sometimes been greatly exaggerated. It is more accurate to say that the Peace was exactly what it purported to be, a temporary agreement to last until the achievement of a settlement—which never came—to the religious schism. Only by removing the schism's effects from imperial public life, which happened after 1648, was the Empire's internal peace restored.

Bibliography

Brady, Thomas A., Jr. "Settlements: The Holy Roman Empire." In Handbook of European History, 1400–1600. Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, edited by Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, vol. 2, pp. 349–383. Leiden, 1995.

Hermann Tüchle. "The Peace of Augsburg: New Order or Lull in the Fighting?" In Government in Reformation Europe 1520–1560, edited by Henry J. Cohn, pp. 145–156. New York, 1971.

Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany. Vol. 1, The Reformation. Princeton, 1959.

Lutz, Heinrich. Christianitas afflicta: Europa, das Reich und die päpstliche Politik im Niedergang der Hegemonie Kaiser Karls V. (1552–1556). Göttingen, 1964.

—THOMAS A. BRADY, JR.

Peace of Augsburg
The front page of the document. Mainz, 1555.
Participants	Charles V; Schmalkaldic League
Location	Augsburg
Date	1555
Result	(1) Established the principle Cuius regio, eius religio. (2) Established the principle of reservatum ecclesiasticum. (3) Laid the legal groundwork for two co-existing religious confessions (Catholicism and Lutheranism) in the German-speaking states of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Peace of Augsburg was a treaty between Charles V and the forces of the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of Lutheran princes, on September 25, 1555, at the imperial city of Augsburg, now in present-day Bavaria, Germany.

It officially ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christendom permanent within the Holy Roman Empire. The Peace established the principle Cuius regio, eius religio, which allowed German princes to select either Lutheranism or Catholicism within the domains they controlled, ultimately reaffirming the independence they had over their states. Subjects, citizens, or residents who did not wish to conform to the prince's choice were given a period in which they were free to migrate to different regions in which their desired religion had been accepted.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Problems 2 Aftermath 3 Citations 4 External links

History

Since the proclamation of a reformed church by Martin Luther, the problems of two religious creeds coexisting in a single state had consumed the resources of the German princes, prelates, and imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire.

Charles V had made a provisional ruling on the religious question, the Augsburg Interim of 1548; this offered a temporary ruling on the legitimacy of two religious creeds in the empire, and codified by law in 30 June 1548 upon the insistence of Charles V, who wanted to work out religious differences under the auspices of a general council of the Catholic Church. The Interim reflected largely Catholic principles of religious behavior in its 26 articles, but it did allow for marriage of the clergy, and bread and wine for the laity. This led to resistance by the Protestant territories, who proclaimed their own Interim at Leipzig the following year.^[1]

The Interim was overthrown in 1552 by the revolt of the Protestant elector Maurice of Saxony and his allies. In the negotiations at Passau in the Summer of 1552, even the Catholic princes had called for a lasting peace, fearing the religious controversy would never be settled. The emperor, however, was unwilling to recognize the religious division in Western Christendom as permanent. This document was foreshadowed by the Peace of Passau, which in 1552 gave Lutherans religious freedom after a victory by Protestant armies. Under the Passau document. He granted a peace only until the next imperial Diet. Charles V called for the meeting in early 1555.

The treaty, negotiated on Charles' behalf by his brother Ferdinand, effectively gave Lutheranism official status within the domains of the Holy Roman Empire. According to the policy of cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion", or "in the Prince's land, the Prince's religion"), the religion (Roman Catholic or Lutheran) of a region's ruler determined the religion of its people. During a grace period, families could choose to move to a region where their faith was practiced. (Article 24: "In case our subjects, whether belonging to the old religion or the Augsburg Confession, should intend leaving their homes with their wives and children in order to settle in another, they shall be hindered neither in the sale of their estates after due payment of the local taxes nor injured in their honour.") Knights and towns who had practiced Lutheranism for some time were exempted under the Declaratio Ferdinandei, but the Ecclesiastical reservation supposedly prevented the principle of cuius regio, eius religio from being applied if an ecclesiastical ruler converted to Lutheranism.

Problems

The document itself had critical problems. While it gave legal basis for the practice of the Lutheran confession, it did not accept any of the Reformed traditions, such as Calvinism and Anabaptism. Although the Peace of Augsburg was moderately successful in relieving tension in the empire and increasing tolerance, it left important things undone. Neither the Anabaptists nor the Calvinists were protected under the peace, so many Protestant groups living under the rule of a Lutheran prince still found themselves in danger of the charge of heresy. (Article 17: "However, all such as do not belong to the two above named religions shall not be included in the present peace but be totally excluded from it.") These minorities did not achieve any legal recognition until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

The intolerance towards Calvinists caused them to take desperate measures that led to the Thirty Years' War. One of the more notable measures was the Second Defenestration of Prague (1618) in which two representatives of the fiercely Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II were thrown out of a castle window in Prague

Aftermath

Representatives of the German estates at the Augsburg conference discuss the possibilities of a religious peace.

The principle of ecclesiastical reservation was tested in the Cologne War (1583-1588), which grew out of the scenario envisioned by Ferdinand when he wrote the proviso: the reigning Prince-Bishop converted to Protestantism; although he did not insist that the population convert, he placed Calvinism on a parity with Catholicism throughout the Electorate of Cologne. This in itself created a two-fold legal problem: first, Calvinism was considered a heresy; second, the Elector did not resign his see, which made him eligible, at least in theory, to cast a ballot for emperor. Finally, his marriage posed a very real potential to convert the Electorate into a dynastic principality, shifting the balance of religious power in the Empire.

A side effect of the religious turmoil was Charles' decision to abdicate and divide Habsburg territory into two sections. His brother Ferdinand ruled the Austrian lands, and Charles' fervently Catholic son, Philip II, became administrator of Spain, the Spanish Netherlands, parts of Italy, and other overseas holdings. Philip was responsible for initiating protracted wars with England and the Dutch, which ultimately crippled Spain and gave the Protestant movement new life.

Citations

1. ^ here

External links

• Partial Text of the Peace of Augsburg
• (German) Full text of The "Peace of Augsburg"
• Cujus regio, ejus religio

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