PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. - A complex of international treaties and internal provisions of the Kingdom of Germany (henceforth more generally called the Corpus Germanicum) that concluded the ruinous and complex Thirty Years' War (q.v.).
It was the result both of the belligerents' exhaustion and of changes in the persons or policies of their leaders, as well as of the patience and skill of the two mediating powers, the Pope and Venice, through which the verbal and written negotiations were conducted: respectively through the nuncio Chigi with France and the Catholic powers, and through the Venetian ambassador Contarini with Sweden and the Protestants. The negotiations began in 1641, while Richelieu was still alive (Hamburg preliminaries); but the actual negotiations took place from April 1645 in separate venues, respectively at Münster (Imperials, France, Holland, Spain, etc.) and at Osnabrück (Imperials, Sweden, German Protestant princes), chiefly to avoid the conflict of precedence between Sweden and France. Thus two treaties were concluded: the Instrumentum pacis Osnabrugense (8 Aug. 1648) and the Instrumentum pacis Monasteriensis (17 Sept. 1648), signed together at Münster on 14-24 Oct. 1648. As early as 30 Jan. 1648, however, Spain had concluded at Münster a peace with the United Provinces of Holland, recognizing them as an independent state with the territories they held in the East and West Indies.
In these treaties three groups of provisions can be distinguished, corresponding to the triple character of the wars they were intended to end: a) territorial clauses, which transferred German territories to the victors and established compensatory balances; b) political-German clauses that consolidated the quasi-independence of the German princes vis-à-vis the emperor and altered the internal structure of the Kingdom of Germany; c) religious-ecclesiastical clauses confirming and expanding the provisions of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555.
a) From the territorial standpoint, Sweden obtained western Pomerania; France the confirmation of the territory of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun (already obtained in 1552) and the acquisition of Alsace on the middle Rhine, as well as the fortress of Pinerolo in Piedmont; the territory of Holland, recognized as an independent Protestant state, was detached from the Kingdom of Germany.
b) Within Germany, the princes obtained the right to form alliances among themselves and with foreign states, provided these were not against the emperor; the Count Palatine was restored to the electoral dignity at the request of the Protestants, but the dignity was retained by the Duke of Bavaria, with a part of the Palatinate (thus increasing the number of electors from seven to eight); the Diet was granted sovereign power in matters of peace, war, taxation and the army, further weakening imperial authority; Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, of the House of Hohenzollern, was granted territorial indemnities in eastern Pomerania, on the Elbe and on the Rhine, with further secularizations of ecclesiastical states (he had in fact become the head of the Corpus evangelicorum).
c) Particularly noteworthy are the ecclesiastical clauses, for the consequences they had for the Catholic Church in Germany. First, they provided for extensive secularization of ecclesiastical property as compensation for war expenses or territorial losses. Thus France received the Lorraine bishoprics; Sweden Bremen and Verden; Hesse-Cassel, among other things, the rich abbey of Hersfeld and a large sum from Rhenish bishoprics; Mecklenburg the bishoprics of Schwerin and Ratzeburg and commanderies of the Knights of St. John; Brandenburg no fewer than four bishoprics; and Brunswick-Lüneburg smaller territories. In the secularized bishoprics—an unusual provision—the cathedral chapters were to continue, but prebends were to be assigned to Protestant canons.
Second, the exercise of religion was regulated anew. The religious freedom granted to Lutherans in the Peace of Augsburg was extended to Calvinists; the "normal year," decisive for the legitimacy of possession and exercise of religion by the confessions, was set not at 1552 (Peace of Augsburg) but at 1624 (though excluding the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs, and advancing it to 1618 for the Palatinate, Baden and Württemberg). The "reservatum ecclesiasticum" was reaffirmed, but at the same time the right of princes to reform their territories was upheld, subject to the right of subjects to religious freedom if they enjoyed it in 1624. Finally, equality of confessions was emphasized in the composition of imperial courts and deputations. In the Diets, religious questions were to be referred to delegations of the parties (Corpus catholicorum, Corpus evangelicorum) and not decided by majority vote.
This peace marks, in the field of international politics, the beginning of the balance-of-power system with the defeat of Habsburg hegemonic ambitions both within Germany and in Europe; in the ecclesiastical field, the humiliation of the Papacy, which saw Catholic states dispose of ecclesiastical property without its consent (the protest of Innocent X in the bull Zelo domus Dei of 26 Nov. 1648 went unheeded), and the political-territorial weakening of the German Church; in relations among the Churches in Germany, the establishment of the principle of parity, destined to exert a profound and lasting influence on the ecclesiastical law of that territory.