The Letter of Majesty of Rudolf II for Bohemia
The patent by which Rudolf II, as king of Bohemia, granted the non-Catholic estates of the kingdom the free practice of their confession, control of their own consistory and university, and the right to build churches.
The patent is issued in the king’s name at the Bohemian diet in Prague Castle. It calls the Protestant estates those who receive communion in both kinds, or Utraquists, and refers to the Bohemian Confession they had presented in 1575. It lets them practise their religion freely “in any place”, gives them the lower consistory of Prague and the university, allows them to appoint Defenders, and permits the lords, knights and royal towns to build further churches. It is said to hold until a general religious settlement is reached in the Empire.
The same page prints the agreement made on the same occasion between the Catholic and Protestant estates. The document matters for the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia because the nobles who threw the king’s regents from the window in 1618 said that they were defending the rights it gave them. The translation was made from the German text printed by Anton Gindely in 1858.
Cited in
- 1618 to 1648, firm date