TREATY of W. — Agreement between the elected emperor Maximilian of Austria and the German estates, concluded on 7 August 1495 at the Diet of W., which established, under the name of « perpetual peace » (ewige Friede), a compromise between the estates’ inclination toward self-government with federal ties (the princes of the Empire and the imperial cities) and the centralizing tendencies of the kings of the House of Habsburg, on the basis of the rights acquired by the estates themselves, thereby laying the foundations for a constitutional structure of the Kingdom of Germany.
Among other provisions, the Treaty established an imperial tax, the so-called « gemeine Pfennig », whose collection and allocation, however, were to be supervised by the Diet, as well as the annual convocation of the Diet itself. Responsibility for ensuring its implementation was entrusted to a court of the Reich Chamber, presided over by a judge appointed by the emperor and composed of sixteen assessors, to be appointed by the estates. This court had ordinary jurisdiction over fiscal matters, cases concerning territorial-feudal affairs, and violations of the « perpetual peace »; it served as a court of second instance for territories whose princes did not enjoy the privilege « de non appellando ». The Treaty of W. thus represents an episode in the struggle for the reform of the Empire, formally demanded in order to ensure order and prevent private wars and organized brigandage, in which the lesser feudal lords had the opportunity to assert themselves; it was also conceived as a guarantee for the estates against the development of imperial-Habsburg centralism. Frequent reference was made to it, particularly to its provisions concerning the use of the imperial tax and those relating to the jurisdiction of the Reich Chamber court, in the disputes provoked in the sixteenth century by the Protestant Reformation, especially with regard to the legitimacy—challenged by Catholics—of the secularization of ecclesiastical property: among other things, the Protestants obtained the confessional parity of the court’s composition.