Peace of Augsburg

Background

The Reformation, which began with Martin Luther in the early sixteenth century, spread throughout the Holy Roman Empire, an empire that united numerous states of Central Europe centered on what is now Germany. Emperor Charles V, a devout Catholic, sought to unite the empire in a single faith. The princes (rulers of their own territories) who had embraced Luther's reforms, however, resisted him. The Protestant side adopted the Augsburg Confession, presented to the Imperial Diet in 1530, as its standard of faith and formed the Schmalkaldic League.

Course of Events

• 1546–1547: The emperor and the Protestant forces fought the Schmalkaldic War.
• 1552: Maurice, Elector of Saxony, rallied the Protestant princes once again and rose against the emperor. The Treaty of Passau, concluded after this revolt, became the foundation for the later settlement.
• 1555: Charles V had an Imperial Diet convened at Augsburg but did not attend in person. Instead, his brother Ferdinand (later Ferdinand I) conducted the negotiations, persuading and pressuring the representatives of the various territories until an agreement was reached. The settlement was proclaimed in the emperor's name on September 25.

The principal provisions of the settlement were as follows:

• Religion determined by the ruler: The ruler of each territory (a land governed by a prince) was to choose either Catholicism or Lutheranism as the religion of that land. This principle later came to be known by the Latin maxim cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion").
• Freedom to emigrate: Subjects who did not follow their ruler's religion were permitted to move to another territory.
• Church property: Church property that the Protestant side had acquired by 1552 was to remain in Protestant hands.
• Ecclesiastical reservation: Territories governed by clergy, such as bishops, were excluded from this principle. Because an ecclesiastical ruler who converted was required to give up both his office and his territory, ecclesiastical territories remained Catholic.
• Declaration of Ferdinand: Knights and certain towns that had long adhered to Lutheranism were permitted to keep their faith even within ecclesiastical territories. This provision, however, remained unpublished for nearly twenty years and never became established as binding law.

Results and Influence

The settlement is regarded as the first permanent legal basis for the coexistence of Catholicism and Lutheranism in Germany. It also prevented princes from waging war against one another on religious grounds. Nevertheless, only two confessions, Catholicism and Lutheranism, were recognized. The Calvinists (Reformed) and Anabaptists, whose movements later spread in Germany, received no protection. Moreover, the settlement did not clearly specify how the ecclesiastical reservation was to be enforced, and it remained a source of conflict. These limitations are counted among the causes of the Thirty Years' War. In the Peace of Westphalia, which ended that war, the Calvinists were granted the same rights as the Lutherans.

Assessment

• Many regard the settlement as a limited form of toleration that granted freedom of religion not to individuals but to rulers. Some also criticize it for entrenching a system in which state power determined religion.
• In political history, it is sometimes viewed as a mechanism that resolved the turmoil by extending the empire's peace order to religious questions. This view emphasizes that, along with the right to determine religion, rulers were also charged with the duty of maintaining religious peace within their territories.
• In the Lutheran tradition, the settlement marks the first occasion on which Lutheranism gained official recognition. In the Calvinist and Anabaptist traditions, it is an agreement from which they were excluded, while from the Catholic perspective it is a compromise that preserved the ecclesiastical territories.
• In Korean churches, it is treated as an event illustrating how the Reformation was brought to a political settlement, and it is also featured in church history series in Christian media.