Zelo domus Dei

The brief is dated at Rome, at St Mary Major, on 26 November 1648, in the fifth year of the pontificate. The pope says that he has learned with grief of the two treaties. He lists what offends him: church property seized by “heretics” is assigned to them for ever; those of the Augsburg Confession are allowed the free exercise of their religion in many places and admitted to offices and to some bishoprics; the payments and confirmations due to Rome from those sees are abolished; the treaty forbids anyone to plead canon law, council decrees or concordats against it; and an eighth electorate is created for a Protestant prince without the consent of the Apostolic See.

He recalls that his nuncio had already protested in public, and then, by the fullness of apostolic power, declares all such articles to have been and to be for ever null, void, unjust and without effect, so that no one is bound to observe them even under oath. The brief is the papacy’s own statement of its objection, and is cited in the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia. The peace treaty had declared in advance that no such protest would be valid.