The Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia

In 1609 the emperor Rudolf II, as king of Bohemia, gave the Protestant estates of that kingdom, which the document calls Utraquist, a Letter of Majesty that promised them the free practice of their confession and the right to build churches (Letter of Majesty (1609) part A, the emperor’s patent). On 23 May 1618 nobles of those estates crowded into the chancellery of the castle at Prague, accused two of the king’s Catholic regents of working to undo the Letter, and threw them and a secretary from the window (Account of the defenestration of Prague (1618) whole account). The account, written from the Catholic side, credits the Virgin Mary with saving the first man to fall (Account of the defenestration of Prague (1618) whole account).

The peace treaty of 1648 describes what followed: discords in the Empire grew into a long war that drew in all Germany and the neighbouring kingdoms, above all Sweden and France, with the desolation of many provinces; it names as the first opponents the emperor Ferdinand II and King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (Treaty of Osnabrück preamble). In 1629 Ferdinand ordered the return of every bishopric, monastery and church property that Catholics had held at the Treaty of Passau of 1552 or since, on pain of the imperial ban (Edict of Restitution (1629) the three articles and the order to the commissioners). In 1631 the imperial and Catholic League armies stormed Magdeburg, and the city burned; Otto Guericke of Magdeburg wrote that the dead could not be counted and were generally reckoned at some twenty thousand (Guericke, Destruction of Magdeburg Hoffmann ed., pp. 82–87). Gustavus Adolphus was killed in battle at Lützen in November 1632; a broadsheet from his own side says that he had taken up arms only to defend God and religion (Lützen broadsheet (1632) title and narrative of the battle).

The two peace treaties are dated 24 October 1648, the one with Sweden at Osnabrück and the one with France at Münster (Treaty of Osnabrück art. 17, closing clause) (Treaty of Münster art. 49 and closing clause). The Osnabrück treaty confirms the religious peace of 1555 (see the Peace of Augsburg), decrees an exact and mutual equality between the estates of the two religions, and makes 1 January 1624 the date to which the possession of church property is restored (Treaty of Osnabrück art. 5, §§1–2). Rulers keep the right to reform religion in their lands, but subjects who practised the other confession in 1624 keep that right, and the rest are to be “patiently tolerated”: they may worship at home, attend services nearby and emigrate on fixed terms (Treaty of Osnabrück art. 5, §§30–37). Everything granted to Catholics and to those of the Augsburg Confession is extended to those called Reformed, and no other religion is to be tolerated in the Empire (Treaty of Osnabrück art. 7).

The treaty declared any protest against it, by clergy or laity, void in advance, and ruled out appeals to canon law, council decrees or concordats with the popes (Treaty of Osnabrück art. 5, §1; art. 17, §3). A month later Innocent X declared null and void for ever every article of the two treaties that harmed the Catholic religion or the rights of the church, naming among them the surrender of church lands to “heretics”, the free exercise allowed to the Augsburg Confession, and an eighth electorate created without his consent (Innocent X, Zelo domus Dei list of grievances, declaration of nullity and date).