The Religious Peace of Augsburg
The recess of the imperial diet held at Augsburg in 1555. Sections 15 to 30 make a lasting peace in the empire between the estates of ‘the old religion’ and those of the Augsburg Confession, and exclude all others.
Read the text at lwl.org ↗English translation of sections 15–20, 23 and 24 (Kidd, Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation, no. 149) ↗
The religious peace is one part of a long recess that also deals with public order and the imperial courts. It is issued by Ferdinand, king of the Romans, who says that he acts on the full powers given him by his brother the emperor Charles V, and it is dated at Augsburg on 25 September 1555.
The text is the law itself and is precise about what was granted and to whom. The parties are the estates of the empire, the princes and cities, and nowhere the individual subject, whose one right is to emigrate. The Latin tag by which the settlement is often summed up, cuius regio, eius religio, does not occur in it. One clause, on the sees and benefices of clergy who left the old religion, was laid down by Ferdinand under the powers the emperor had given him, because the two sides could not agree, and the text says so.
Cited in
- 25 June 1530, firm date
- 25 September 1555, firm date