ECLESIASTICAL RESERVATION. — Name given to one of the most important clauses of the Peace of Augsburg (25 Sept. 1555) between the Protestants and Catholics of Germany.
After the second war, known as the Smalkaldic War, which ended with the Truce of Passau (1552), the Lutherans, feeling themselves the stronger party, wished to impose their conditions; Emperor Charles V delegated his brother, King Ferdinand, with full powers to negotiate the peace. The Diet of Augsburg opened on 5 Feb. 1555, and the negotiations were laborious; the Lutherans, having previously met at Naumburg, had pledged themselves not to yield in the slightest on the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran). Ferdinand and the majority of the Catholic princes, unprepared to continue the war, were determined to make peace at any cost, despite the contrary opinion of the papal nuncios. The Lutheran princes thus obtained what they wanted: the *ius reformandi* and the *ius sacra*, that is, the right to impose their Augsburg confession on their subjects (excluding Calvinism and every other Protestant denomination) and to be completely exempt from episcopal jurisdiction. Furthermore, all secularizations, that is, Church properties usurped by them up to the year 1552, passed definitively into their hands. Subsequent secularizations were declared invalid, but bishops and abbots, who were immediate members of the Empire, could convert to Lutheranism, thereby losing all their rights over their sees and abbeys (r. e.); this clause was given the name of *reservatum ecclesiasticum*.
The official text of the Treaty expressed itself thus: «Whereas the members of the Empire of the two religions have not been able to reach agreement on the manner of regulating matters concerning ecclesiastics who shall abandon the old religion, the King [Ferdinand] declares, by virtue of the full powers which the Emperor has conferred upon him, that any archbishop, bishop, prelate, or other member of the Catholic clergy who shall change his religion shall thereby lose his office, dignity, and revenues, without prejudice to his honours. To the Chapters, and to those having, by tradition and right, the capacity to make ecclesiastical appointments, full liberty shall be left to elect a person of the old religion in place of the one who has resigned» (Lehmann, op. cit. in bibl., pp. 51-52).
Since the text of the Treaty asserted that «no agreement had been reached» and that the r. e. was nothing more than a decree of the King in the name of the Emperor, the Protestants agreed among themselves not to consider it binding upon them. This led, as early as 1582, to the so-called Cologne War, concerning the Elector-Archbishop of the city, who wished to «secularize» himself while retaining his office. The violations of the r. e. by the Lutherans were so numerous that they became one of the most serious causes of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48).