The Edict of Restitution

The edict is dated at Vienna on 6 March 1629. It argues from the text of the Religious Peace of Augsburg that Protestant rulers had no right to take over monasteries and church foundations within their lands, nor to keep bishoprics whose holders had left the Catholic church, and that Catholic rulers might hold their subjects to their own religion. It then orders imperial commissioners into the Empire to demand back every archbishopric, bishopric, monastery and church property that the Catholics had possessed at the time of the Treaty of Passau or afterwards, and threatens those who resist with the imperial ban.

It is the emperor’s own statement of his policy at the height of his military success. The treaty of Osnabrück of 1648 names it among the acts that may never be invoked against the peace. It is cited in the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia.