After the Peace of Augsburg, which religion was officially recognized in many German states

The Thirty Years’ War was a series of wars in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. It was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, resulting in millions of casualties.

Initially a war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it gradually developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers. These states employed relatively large mercenary armies, and the war became less about religion and more of a continuation of the France-Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence. In the 17th century, religious beliefs and practices were a much larger influence on an average European. In that era, almost everyone was vested on one side of the dispute or another.

The war began when the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, tried to impose religious uniformity on his domains, forcing Roman Catholicism on its peoples. The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose granted in the Peace of Augsburg, banded together to form the Protestant Union. Ferdinand II was a devout Roman Catholic and relatively intolerant when compared to his predecessor, Rudolf II. His policies were considered heavily pro-Catholic.

The Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was a fragmented collection of largely independent states. The position of the Holy Roman Emperor was mainly titular, but the emperors, from the House of Habsburg, also directly ruled a large portion of imperial territory (lands of the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Bohemia), as well as the Kingdom of Hungary. The Austrian domain was thus a major European power in its own right, ruling over some eight million subjects. Another branch of the House of Habsburg ruled over Spain and its empire, which included the Spanish Netherlands, southern Italy, the Philippines, and most of the Americas. In addition to Habsburg lands, the Holy Roman Empire contained several regional powers, such as the Duchy of Bavaria, the Electorate of Saxony, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the Electorate of the Palatinate, Landgraviate of Hesse, the Archbishopric of Trier, and the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg.

Peace of Augsburg

After the Protestant Reformation, these independent states became divided between Catholic and Protestant rulership, giving rise to conflict. The Peace of Augsburg (1555), signed by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, ended the war between German Lutherans and Catholics. The Peace established the principle Cuius regio, eius religio (“Whose realm, his religion”), which allowed Holy Roman Empire state 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 a prince’s choice were given a period in which they were free to emigrate to different regions in which their desired religion had been accepted.

Although the Peace of Augsburg created a temporary end to hostilities, it did not resolve the underlying religious conflict, which was made yet more complex by the spread of Calvinism throughout Germany in the years that followed. This added a third major faith to the region, but its position was not recognized in any way by the Augsburg terms, to which only Catholicism and Lutheranism were parties.

After the Peace of Augsburg, which religion was officially recognized in many German states

Religion in the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. Blues indicate Catholic regions and red/orange indicate Protestant (including Lutheran, Calvinist, Hussite, and Reform).

German map of religious demographics in the Holy Roman Empire before the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War.

Tension Mount

Religious tensions remained strong throughout the second half of the 16th century. The Peace of Augsburg began to unravel—some converted bishops refused to give up their bishoprics, and certain Habsburg and other Catholic rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain sought to restore the power of Catholicism in the region. This was evident from the Cologne War (1583–1588), in which a conflict ensued when the prince-archbishop of the city, Gebhard Truchsess von Waldburg, converted to Calvinism. As he was an imperial elector, this could have produced a Protestant majority in the college that elected the Holy Roman Emperor, a position that Catholics had always held.

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Rhine lands and those south to the Danube were largely Catholic, while the north was dominated by Lutherans, and certain other areas, such as west-central Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, were dominated by Calvins. Minorities of each creed existed almost everywhere, however. In some lordships and cities, the numbers of Calvinists, Catholics, and Lutherans were approximately equal.

Much to the consternation of their Spanish ruling cousins, the Habsburg emperors who followed Charles V (especially Ferdinand I and Maximilian II, but also Rudolf II and his successor, Matthias) were content to allow the princes of the empire to choose their own religious policies. These rulers avoided religious wars within the empire by allowing the different Christian faiths to spread without coercion. This angered those who sought religious uniformity. Meanwhile, Sweden and Denmark, both Lutheran kingdoms, sought to assist the Protestant cause in the Empire, and wanted to gain political and economic influence there as well.

By 1617, it was apparent that Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, would die without an heir, with his lands going to his nearest male relative, his cousin Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria, heir-apparent and Crown Prince of Bohemia.

War Breaks Out

Ferdinand II, educated by the Jesuits, was a staunch Catholic who wanted to impose religious uniformity on his lands. This made him highly unpopular in Protestant Bohemia. The population’s sentiments notwithstanding, the added insult of the nobility’s rejection of Ferdinand, who had been elected Bohemian Crown Prince in 1617, triggered the Thirty Years’ War in 1618, when his representatives were thrown out of a window and seriously injured. The so-called Defenestration of Prague provoked open revolt in Bohemia, which had powerful foreign allies. Ferdinand was upset by this calculated insult, but his intolerant policies in his own lands had left him in a weak position. The Habsburg cause in the next few years would seem to suffer unrecoverable reverses. The Protestant cause seemed to wax toward a quick overall victory.

The war can be divided into four major phases: The Bohemian Revolt, the Danish intervention, the Swedish intervention, and the French intervention.

After the Peace of Augsburg, which religion was officially recognized in many German states

Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, whose aim, as a zealous Catholic, was to restore Catholicism as the only religion in the empire and suppress Protestantism, and whose actions helped precipitate the Thirty Years’ War.

After the Peace of Augsburg, which religion was officially recognized in many German states

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After the Peace of Augsburg, which religion was officially recognized in many German states

This is a List of Available Answers Options :

  1. Anglicanism
  2. Calvinism
  3. Lutheranism
  4. Presbyterianism


The best answer is C. Lutheranism.

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The Peace of Augsburg, also called the Augsburg Settlement,[1] was a treaty between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the Schmalkaldic League, signed in September 1555 at the imperial city of Augsburg. It officially ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christianity permanent within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing rulers to choose either Lutheranism or Roman Catholicism as the official confession of their state. However, the Peace of Augsburg arrangement is also credited with ending much Christian unity around Europe. Calvinism was not allowed until the Peace of Westphalia.

After the Peace of Augsburg, which religion was officially recognized in many German states
Peace of Augsburg

The front page of the document. Mainz, 1555.

Date1555LocationAugsburgParticipantsCharles V; Schmalkaldic LeagueOutcome(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 has been described as "the first step on the road toward a European system of sovereign states."[2] The system, created on the basis of the Augsburg Peace, collapsed at the beginning of the 17th century, which was one of the reasons for the Thirty Years' War.

The Peace ran over the principle Cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion"), which allowed the princes of states within the Holy Roman Empire to adopt either Lutheranism or Catholicism within the domains they controlled, ultimately reaffirming their sovereignty over those domains. Subjects, citizens, or residents who did not wish to conform to the prince's choice were given a grace period in which they were free to emigrate to different regions in which their desired religion had been accepted.

Article 24 stated: "In case our subjects, whether belonging to the old religion or the Augsburg Confession, should intend leaving their homes with their wives and children 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 honor."

Charles V had made an interim ruling, the Augsburg Interim of 1548, on the legitimacy of two religious creeds in the empire, and this was codified in law on 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 largely reflected principles of religious behavior in its 26 articles, although it allowed for marriage of the clergy, and the giving of both bread and wine to the laity. This led to resistance by the Protestant territories, who proclaimed their own Interim at Leipzig the following year.[3]

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, Charles granted a peace only until the next imperial Diet, whose meeting was called 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. 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.

The Peace of Augsburg contained three main principles:[4]

  1. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio ("Whose realm, his religion") provided for internal religious unity within a state: the religion of the prince became the religion of the state and all its inhabitants. Those inhabitants who could not conform to the prince's religion were allowed to leave: an innovative idea in the 16th century. This principle was discussed at length by the various delegates, who finally reached agreement on the specifics of its wording after examining the problem and the proposed solution from every possible angle.[5]
  2. The second principle, called the reservatum ecclesiasticum (ecclesiastical reservation), covered the special status of the ecclesiastical state. If the prelate of an ecclesiastic state changed his religion, the inhabitants of that state did not have to do so. Instead, the prelate was expected to resign from his post, although this was not spelled out in the agreement.[6]
  3. The third principle, known as Declaratio Ferdinandei (Ferdinand's Declaration), exempted knights and some of the cities from the requirement of religious uniformity, if the reformed religion had been practiced there since the mid-1520s. This allowed for a few mixed cities and towns where Catholics and Lutherans had lived together. It also protected the authority of the princely families, the knights and some of the cities to determine what religious uniformity meant in their territories. Ferdinand inserted this at the last minute, on his own authority.[7]

The third principle exempted knights and some of the cities under the jurisdiction of an ecclesiastical prince if they had practiced Lutheranism for some time (Lutheranism was the only branch of Protestantism recognized under the Peace). The provision was not publicized as part of the treaty, and was kept secret for almost two decades.[8]

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, nor did it recognize 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 Third Defenestration of Prague (1618) in which two representatives of the fiercely Catholic King of Bohemia Archduke Ferdinand (Matthias was Emperor until 20 March 1619) were thrown out of a castle window in Prague.[citation needed]

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-archbishop, Hermann of Wied, converted to Protestantism; although he did not insist that the population converted, he placed Calvinism on a parity with Catholicism throughout the Electorate of Cologne. This in itself came forth as 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.

  1. ^ Hughes, Michael (1992). Early Modern Germany, 1477–1804, MacMillan Press and University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, p. 59. ISBN 0-8122-1427-7.
  2. ^ Reus-Smit, Christian (2011). "Struggles for Individual Rights and the Expansion of the International System". International Organization. 65 (2): 207–242. doi:10.1017/S0020818311000038. ISSN 1531-5088. S2CID 145668420.
  3. ^ here
  4. ^ For a general discussion of the impact of the Reformation on the Holy Roman Empire, see Holborn, chapters 6–9 (pp. 123–248).
  5. ^ Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550 (1980) p.259n13.
  6. ^ Parker, Geoffrey. The Thirty Years' War, p. 17. ISBN 0-415-12883-8
  7. ^ Holborn, pp. 244–245.
  8. ^ Parker, Geoffrey. The Thirty Years' War, 2nd Edition. p. 17. ISBN 0-415-12883-8

  • Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany, The Reformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959 [1982], ISBN 9780691007953.
  • May, Gerhard (1999), "Augsburg, Peace of", in Fahlbusch, Erwin (ed.), Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, pp. 159, ISBN 0802824137
  • Partial text of the "Peace of Augsburg" at the Wayback Machine (archived 13 May 2008)
  • Full text of the "Peace of Augsburg" (in German)
  • Brittanica's words on the "Peace of Augsburg"

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