The Peace of Augsburg

The diet that met at Augsburg in 1555 was held without the emperor. The recess explains that Charles V was kept away by bodily weakness and other hindrances and that his brother Ferdinand I, king of the Romans, took the business on himself in the emperor’s name (Peace of Augsburg §§ 3–5). The estates found that agreement on the disputed articles of faith could not be reached quickly. Earlier truces in the matter of religion, they recalled, had never been enough to keep the peace. They therefore set the question of doctrine aside for another time and took up the question of peace (Peace of Augsburg §§ 9–11, 13).

The terms are these. The emperor, the king and the estates are not to make war on any estate of the empire, or harm it, on account of the Augsburg Confession, nor to force it from that confession in its own principalities, lands and lordships; the disputed religion is to be brought to agreement only by Christian, friendly and peaceful means (Peace of Augsburg § 15). The estates of the Augsburg Confession are in the same way to leave those of the old religion, spiritual and secular, undisturbed in their religion, property and rights (Peace of Augsburg § 16). All who belong to neither of these two religions are shut out of the peace entirely (Peace of Augsburg § 17).

On one point the two sides could not agree, and Ferdinand settled it by the authority the emperor had given him: an archbishop, bishop or other prelate who leaves the old religion must give up his office and its revenues, and the chapter may elect a successor of the old religion (Peace of Augsburg § 18). Church property that estates had taken over stays as it is, provided it did not belong to an immediate estate of the empire and had not been in the clergy’s hands at the treaty of Passau or since; and the bishops’ jurisdiction over the religion, worship and ministry of the estates of the Augsburg Confession is suspended until the religion is reconciled (Peace of Augsburg §§ 19–20). No estate may draw another’s subjects to its religion or protect them against their rulers. Subjects of either religion who wish to leave on account of it may go with their wives and children and sell their goods, on paying the customary dues (Peace of Augsburg §§ 23–24). In the free and imperial cities where both religions had been practised, both are to continue side by side (Peace of Augsburg § 27).

The peace was to hold until the religion was reconciled, and if that never came about it was to stand for ever (Peace of Augsburg § 25). The recess is dated at Augsburg on 25 September 1555 (Peace of Augsburg closing clause). For its later history see the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia.