WELSH JOINT EDUCATION COMMITTEE

CYD-BWYLLGOR ADDYSG CYMRU

Advanced GCE in HISTORY

UNIT 5: Route 2
Prescribed Document Pack
2006-2010

THE GERMAN REFORMATION,

c.1517-1555

THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG

DOCUMENT 1
A Confession of Faith Presented in Augsburg by Certain Princes and Cities to His Imperial
Majesty Charles V in the Year 1530
"I will also speak of thy testimonies before kings, and shall not be put to shame."
Psalm 119:46
IV. Justification
It is also taught among us that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before
God by our own merits, works, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and
become righteous before God by grace, for Christ's sake, through faith, when we believe that
Christ suffered for us and that for this sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal
life are given to us. For God will regard and reckon this faith as righteousness, as Paul says
in Romans 3:21-26 and 4:5.
VI. The New Obedience
It is also taught among us that such faith should produce good fruits and good works and that
we must do all such good works as God has commanded, but that we should do them for
God's sake and not place our trust in them as if thereby to merit favour before God.
VII. The Church
It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is
the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy
sacraments are administered according to the Gospel. For it is sufficient for the true unity of
the Christian church that the Gospel be preached in conformity with a pure understanding of
it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word. It is not
necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that ceremonies instituted by men, should
be observed uniformly in all places.
IX. Baptism
It is taught among us that Baptism is necessary and that grace is offered through it. Children,
too, should be baptised, for in Baptism they are committed to God and become acceptable to
him.
On this account the Anabaptists who teach that infant Baptism is not right are rejected.
X. The Holy Supper of our Lord
It is taught among us that the true body and blood of Christ are really present in the Supper of
our Lord under the form of bread and wine and are there distributed and received. The
contrary doctrine is therefore rejected.
The Augsburg Confession (June 25, 1530)

DOCUMENT 2
All right, if a war or a rebellion should break out as I fear I wish to testify before God and all
the world here in this writing that we, who are derisively called "Lutherans," neither
counselled it or consented to it, nor, indeed, gave any cause for it; rather we constantly and
ceaselessly pleaded and called for peace. The papists themselves know and have to admit
that we have preached peace up till now and have also kept the peace, and that peace was also
our ardent desire now at the diet. Consequently, if a war or a rebellion should break out, it
can under no circumstances be said, "See, that is the fruit of Lutheran teaching." It will rather
have to be said, "See, that is the papists' teaching and its fruit; they want peace neither for
themselves nor for others".
Furthermore, if war breaks out - which God forbid - I will not reprove those who defend
themselves against the murderous and bloodthirsty papists, nor let anyone else rebuke them as
being seditious, but I will accept their action and let it pass as self-defence. I will direct them
in this matter to the law and to the jurists. For in such an instance, when the murderers and
bloodhounds wish to wage war and to murder, it is in truth no insurrection to rise against
them and defend oneself.
This is my sincere advice: If the Emperor should issue a call to arms against us on behalf of
the Pope or because of our teaching, as the papists at present horribly gloat and boast - though
I do not yet expect this of the Emperor - no one should lend himself to it or obey the Emperor
in this event. All may rest assured that God has strictly forbidden compliance with such a
command of the Emperor. Whoever does obey him can be certain that he is disobedient to
God and will lose both body and soul eternally in the war. For in this case the Emperor
would not only act in contravention of God and divine law but also in violation of his own
imperial law, vow, duty, seal, and edicts. And lest you imagine that this is just my own idea
or that such advice is dictated by my fancy, I shall submit clear and strong reasons and
arguments to convince you that this is not my own counsel, but God's earnest, manifold, and
stringent command.
And as I did above, I testify here again that I do not wish to incite or spur anyone to war or
rebellion or even self-defence, but solely to peace. But if the papists - our devil - refuse to
keep the peace and, impenitently raging against the Holy Spirit with their persistent
abominations, insist on war, and thereby get their heads bloodied or even perish, I want to
witness publicly here that this was not my doing, nor did I give any cause for it.
From Martin Luther in his address, Dr. Martin Luther's Warning to his Dear German
People (1531)

DOCUMENT 3
In order to bring peace into the holy empire of the Germanic Nation, between the Roman Imperial
Majesty and the Electors, princes, and Estates: let neither his Imperial Majesty for the Electors,
Princes, etc., do any violence or harm to any estate of the Empire on account of the Augsburg
Confession, but let them enjoy their religious belief, liturgy and ceremonies as well as their estates
and other rights and privileges in peace; and other rights and privileges in peace; and complete
religious peace shall be obtained only by Christian means of amity, or under threat of the punishment
of the imperial ban.
Likewise the Estates espousing the Augsburg Confession shall let all the Estates and Princes who
cling to the old religion live in absolute peace and in the enjoyment of all their estates, rights and
privileges.
However all such as do not belong to the two above-mentioned religions shall not be included in the
present peace but be totally excluded from it.
Where an archbishop, or prelate or any other priest of our old religion shall abandon the same, his
archbishopric, bishopric, prelacy, and other benefices, together with all their income and revenues
which he has so far possessed, shall be abandoned by him without any further objection or delay. The
chapters and such as are entitled to it by common law or the custom of the place shall elect a person
espousing the old religion, who may enter on the possession and enjoyment of all the rights and
incomes of the place without any further hindrance and without prejudging any ultimate amicable
settlement of religion.
In case our subjects, whether belonging to the old religion or to the Augsburg Confession, should
intend leaving their homes, with their wives and children, in order to settle in another place, they shall
neither be hindered in the sale of their estates after due payment of the local taxes nor injured in their
honour.

The Peace of Augsburg (1555)

DOCUMENT 4

A contemporary woodcut showing Luther and the Elector John Frederick of Saxony
before a Crucifix

DOCUMENT 5

Memorial Sheet for Duke John Frederick of Saxony,

a painting by Pangratz Kempf, (1554)
The sheet shows the reverence attached after his death to John Frederick. He was hailed as a
Lutheran saint and martyr because of his imprisonment after defeat in the first Schmalkddic
War. Here he is receiving a vision of Christ the Saviour.

DOCUMENT 6
Thereupon have we the Commissioners, the Electors, Princes, Estates of the Empire, the
ambassadors of the same, now here at this present Diet, unanimously agreed and resolved,
while awaiting the sitting of the Council or a national Assembly with our subjects, on the
matters which the Edict published by His Imperial Majesty at the Diet held at Worms may
concern, each one so to live, govern, and carry himself as he hopes and trusts to answer it to
God and His Imperial Majesty.
The Recess of the Diet (August 2, 1526)

DOCUMENT 7
Most Invincible, Imperial, and Catholic Majesty!
In the first place, I say that in order to facilitate this business it will be very much to the point
if your Catholic Majesty with your very great authority, and then with the help of such
Catholic Princes as shall seem best to you, should with every care try and strive to bring into
the right and Catholic road some of these Princes, even if you cannot bring all who have
subscribed to these articles and propositions; and also some of the imperial Cities, which
indeed, as your Serene Highness will see in the reply which will be given to you, being
desirous of persevering in the assertion of the said articles proposed, have strayed far and
entirely from the truth and the sincere faith of Christ.
Your Highness must be aware that it was, and always will be, in the nature of heretics to be
obstinate and hard, never willing to give way or consent to reason, nor to any authority,
however clear and approved. This I am convinced will be the same with these, from the
protestation they make and propound at the beginning. For though they try to cover it up and
soften it down with fine words, yet it seems to me to say nothing else in the end than that, if
the matter is not settled to their liking, they mean to persist in their opinion and in their appeal
to a future Council - not because they are to be determined, either as regards belief or giving
way, by any Council; but that they may be able to persist in their wrong opinions and evade
the coming of Your Highness for their great good, and in this way (which God avert) reduce
all Germany to their perverse opinions, fill it with tumults and seditions, as they have done up
to now, and so be able to contaminate the rest of Christendom.
But let your Catholic Majesty with your illustrious Princes and good and true Christians, after
having established a complete understanding and confederation, prepare to decide thoroughly
to extirpate these heresies, proceeding against them with order and system by means of
reason and justice, using you your temporal arms and I the spiritual, and thus zealously
punish them as is right; which, with the help of God, will be easy for you. And in this
glorious, holy, and very truly Catholic undertaking, your Serene Highness would show
yourself to all the world to be as in name so in deeds, as I told you before, the true and
undoubted successor of that Charles the Great.
Cardinal Legate Campeggio's response to the Augsburg Confession (July, 1530)

DOCUMENT 8
If one may resist the Pope, one may also resist all the emperors and dukes who contrive to
defend the pope. The Pope wishes every soul to go to hell for his sake. Hence it is necessary
that one march against his soldiers that war under him and go out to meet them even though it
mean a revolution. For we can not allow the damnation of souls. I am obliged to lay down
my life for the emperor, but not my soul.
If the Emperor defends the Pope, who is a wolf, one is not to yield or stand for it, but one
must attack him. Self-defence is the natural course.
The princes must resist the tyrants, a thing which the First Table [of the Decalogue] also
requires. The Emperor and Ferdinand are seeking first and foremost to get our goods, but still
under the cover of the Pope.
Martin Luther in his Disputation Concerning the Right to Resist the Emperor
(May 8-9, 1539)

DOCUMENT 9
In the spring of 1547 Charles joined up with Moritz of Saxony's army in Saxony. By 24 April
the imperial and League armies confronted each other across the river Elbe at Mulberg,
between Dresden and Torgan. The imperial army outflanked its opponents and routed them;
Elector Johann Freidrich was taken prisoner shortly afterwards and his capture ensured the
capitulation of Wittenberg (19 May). Duke Moritz was instantly given his promised reward
of Johann Freidrich's electorate, and Philipp of Hesse was induced to surrender to Charles on
the 19 June.
Charles V had broken up the protestant league, but only by exploiting existing jealousies,
humiliating only his most dangerous opponents, and in effect giving up a complete restoration
of Catholicism. When the 'violent' or 'iron clad' Reichstag met in Augsburg on 1 September
1547, the pope had moved the council to Bologna in the papal states and conducted its
business in disregard of Charles' diplomatic needs. Charles had to try to impose a provisional
or "interim" settlement, essentially a moderate catholic reformation, on the Reich; he used a
reform sketch based loosely on the work of Gropper and Pflug, and took advice on it himself
when the Reichstag would not help. His victory thus turned into administrative and political
chaos when the bulk of the protestant princes rejected a first form and it was amended, and
the catholic princes then refused to adopt the revision. In the end Charles had to publish the
'Imperial Clarification of Religion' (the Interim) on 15 May 1548 as a creed and law for the
protestants only, with a separate reform edict for the Catholics.
Enforcing it was a nightmare.
From academic historian Euan Cameron, writing in The European Reformation (1991)

DOCUMENT 10
By early 1555 all Germany was sick of trouble and longing for peace. Charles admitted the
fact - which in the circumstances, meant defeat for him - but could not bring himself to help.
Again, he left things to Ferdinand while he moved to Brussels and prepared to divest himself
of his power. The Diet of Augsburg, which sat from February to September 1555, presented a
novel appearance. The emperor was absent and the pope not represented. Though Ferdinand
came in person, few princes did so; and this assembly of envoys demonstrated clearly that the
Holy Roman Empire had lost everything but its name. The prolonged negotiations produced
a religious peace which was, with difficulty, to last for sixty three years. As treaties go, this is
a good record, and it is not easy to see why the work of this Diet should often be regarded as
futile. In effect, the parties agreed to tolerate both the Roman Catholic and Lutheran
Churches in Germany, each territory to follow the religion of its prince, while both
confessions were to suffer each other in any city where they were both represented.
Proselytising was forbidden, and ecclesiastical princes who changed to the Lutheran side
were to abandon their territories and be succeeded by new prelates canonically elected.
Anyone dissatisfied with the religion of his prince was to have full liberty to move into
another's realm. It was perhaps unfortunate that toleration was expressly refused to any other
form of the Christian religion. This clause, directed against the sects and Anabaptists,
assumed serious importance with the spread of Calvinism; but of that there can be no
suspicion in 1555. If the ostensible purport of the Peace was to accept the religious schism as
inescapable, the fact of political splintering was even more obvious. The Peace of Augsburg
closed the period during which Germany had been the boiling point of Europe and set the
scene for 300 years of German history in a back-water. By bringing peace to that much
buffeted region, it also removed it from the place of first importance which it had occupied
ever since the Diet of Worms; by ensuring the predominance of territorial independence, it
reduced Germany to the condition of "petty-statery" (Keinstaaterei) which characterized the
region during the ascendancy of the great nation states.
From academic historian G.R. Elton, writing in Reformation Europe 1517-1559 (1962)

DOCUMENT 11
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
Germany.
The effect of the Peace of Augsburg was to establish official toleration for Lutherans in the
Holy Roman Empire. According to the policy of cuius regio, eius religio, the religion
Catholic or Lutheran) of a region's prince would be enforced on the population thereof. Some
religious choice was offered the people of the empire in that a grace period was given, in
which families could choose to move to a principality that favoured their faith of choice
(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 Anapaptists nor the
Calvinists were protected under the peace: many Protestant groups living under the rule of a
Lutheran prince still found themselves in danger of the charge of heresy. (Article 7:
"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
Calvanists until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
The religious divisions that the Peace of Augsburg created in Germany left it fragmented long
after the other great nation-states of Europe (England, France, Austria-Hungry, etc.) were able
to unite, thus weakening Germany as a world power until well into the 19 th Century. Some
historians theorize that it was this delay in unification that led to the extreme German
nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, leading indirectly to World War One and World War
Two.
Extracted from Wikipedia, an on-line encyclopaedia

DOCUMENT 12
At the Diet (formal assembly of princes) of Worms in 1521, Lutheranism was outlawed by
emperor Charles. But he was unable to stamp out Lutheranism at the time because of other
crises. Not until 1529 was Charles able to follow up on the Lutheran issue. He sent word
that Catholicism was to be restored everywhere in Germany. Many German cities and
princes protested. These were called the "Protesting estates" and from them we got the name,
"Protestant."
Charles saw that some of conciliation would be in order. In 1530 he attended an assembly
known as the Diet at Augsburg. Lutherans presented the Confession of Augsburg in an
attempt to prove to Rome that their views were Biblical. This confession remains the basis of
the Lutheran faith. Reconciliation proved impossible and Charles ordered Lutherans to
reunite with the Catholic church by April 15, 1531. This had the effect of stiffening
opposition against him. A military alliance of Protestants, known as the Schmalkaldic League
came into being. Charles crushed this, but Elector Maurice switched sides and declared war
on the emperor, forcing him to negotiate with the Protestants. In 1552, at the Peace of
Passau, Charles accepted the existence of the evangelical church and promised to hold a
"diet" to settle the controversy.
The diet was not convened until 1555. Again it was held in Augsburg. Peace was arranged
between the Lutherans and Catholics on this day, September 25, 1555. In many respects it
was imperfect. Although Lutherans were given legal standing, Anabaptists and Calvinists
were not. "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." Each German territory must take the
faith of its prince. This inbuilt religious divisiveness crippled Germany's ability to unite as a
nation. There was no toleration with a territory.
The Peace of Augsburg did, however, permit people to transplant to a region whose faith was
more congenial to each. "In case our subjects, whether belonging to the old religion or to the
Augsburg Confession, should intend leaving their homes, with their wives and children, in
order to settle in another place, they shall neither be hindered in the sale of their estates after
due pay, net of the local taxes nor injured in their honour . . ."
The Peace of Augsburg offered the merest hint of toleration. Weak as was the treaty, it
brought increased stability. Not until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 were Calvinists added
to the list of tolerated religions.
Extracted from The Catholic Encyclopaedia (1917)
The Catholic Encyclopaedia is a reference guide to events and personalities connected
with the Catholic Church.

GCE History Prescribed Document Pack (2006-2010): The Peace of Augsburg/ED

19/10/2016