Peace of Augsburg
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The Peace of Augsburg was a treaty signed between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the forces of the Schmalkaldic League on September 25, 1555 at the city of Augsburg in present-day Germany. It officially ended the struggle between the two groups and made the division of Christendom permanent. This allowed for German princes to select either Lutheranism or Catholicism within the domains they controlled. Families were also given a grace period in which they had the right to move to different regions of their desired religion. The Peace of Passau, which in 1552 gave Lutherans religious freedom after a victory by Protestant armies, foreshadowed the formation of this document.
The treaty effectively gave Lutheranism official status within the domains of the Holy Roman Empire. According to the policy of cuius regio, eius religio ("whose reign, that religion", or "in the Prince's land, the Prince's religion"), the religion (Catholic or Lutheran) of a region's ruler determined the religion of its people. During a grace period, families could choose to move to a region where their faith was practiced. (Article 24: "In case our subjects, whether belonging to the old religion or the Augsburg Confession, should intend leaving their homes with their wives and children in order to settle in another, they shall be hindered neither in the sale of their estates after due payment of the local taxes nor injured in their honour.")
Although the Peace of Augsburg was moderately successful in relieving tension in the empire and increasing tolerance, it left important things undone. Neither the Anabaptists nor the Calvinists were protected under the peace, so many Protestant groups living under the rule of a Lutheran prince still found themselves in danger of the charge of heresy. (Article 17: "However, all such as do not belong to the two above named religions shall not be included in the present peace but be totally excluded from it.") Tolerance was not officially extended to Calvinists until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
The intolerance towards Calvinists caused them to take desperate measures that led to the Thirty Years' War. One of the more notable measures was the Second Defenestration of Prague (1618) in which two representatives of the fiercely Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II were thrown out of a castle window in Prague. This eventually led to more involved conflict between Protestants and Catholics.
By aligning religious divisions with political divisions, the Peace of Augsburg established the patchwork of states that characterized Germany into the 19th century. Some historians argue[citation needed] that this late unification as a nation-state led to the extreme German nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, and thus indirectly to World War I and World War II.
