Westphalia, Peace of

WESTFALIA, PEACE OF. - Complex of international treaties and internal provisions of the Kingdom of Germany (from this time more generally called the Corpus Germanicum) that brought to an end the ruinous and complex Thirty Years’ War (v.).

It was the result at once of the belligerents’ exhaustion, of changes in the persons or policies of those directing their governments, and of the patience and skill of the two mediating powers, the Pope and Venice, through whom 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. Their beginnings date back to 1641, while Richelieu was still alive (the Hamburg preliminaries); but the actual negotiations took place from April 1645 onward at separate locations, respectively Münster (the imperial representatives, France, Holland, Spain, etc.) and Osnabrück (the imperial representatives, Sweden, and the German Protestant princes), above all in order to avoid the conflict of precedence between Sweden and France. Two treaties thus resulted: the Instrumentum pacis Osnabrugense (8 August 1648) and the Instrumentum pacis Monasteriense (17 September 1648), signed together at Münster on 14–24 October 1648. As early as 30 January 1648, however, Spain had concluded peace at Münster with the United Provinces of Holland, recognizing them as an independent state together with the territories in their possession in the East and West Indies. In these treaties, three groups of provisions may be distinguished in relation to the threefold character of the wars which they intended to bring to an end: a) territorial clauses, which transferred German territories to the victors and established compensatory arrangements for equilibrium; b) politico-German clauses, which consolidated the almost complete independence of the German princes with respect to the Emperor and modified the internal structure of the Kingdom of Germany; c) religious-ecclesiastical clauses confirming and extending the provisions of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555.

a) From the territorial point of view, Sweden obtained Western Pomerania; France obtained confirmation of its possession of the territory of the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun (already acquired in 1555), as well as the acquisition of Alsace on the middle Rhine and of 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 the German sphere, the princes obtained the right to ally themselves with one another and with foreign states, provided that this was not directed against the Emperor; the count palatine was restored to electoral dignity, in accordance with the Protestants’ request, but that dignity was retained by the duke of Bavaria, together with part of the Palatinate (thus increasing the number of electors from 7 to 8); the Diet was granted sovereign power in matters of peace, war, taxation, and the army, with a further emptying-out of imperial authority; the Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick William of Hohenzollern, was granted territorial indemnities in Eastern Pomerania, along the Elbe and the Rhine, together with further secularizations of ecclesiastical states (he had in fact become the head of the Corpus evangelicorum). c) The ecclesiastical clauses were particularly noteworthy, because by virtue of them the Peace of Westfalia had consequences for the Catholic Church in Germany. First of all, they provided for a broad secularization of ecclesiastical property as compensation for war expenses or territorial losses. Thus France received the bishoprics of Lorraine mentioned above; Sweden, Bremen and Werden; Hesse-Cassel, among other possessions, the rich abbey of Hirschfeld and a substantial sum charged to the Rhenish bishoprics; Mechtemburgo, the bishoprics of Schwerin and Ratzeburg and commanderies of the Knights of St. John; Brandenburg, no fewer than four bishoprics; and Braunschweig-Lüneburg, smaller territories. In the secularized bishoprics—in a singular provision—the cathedral Chapters were to persist, but the prebends were to be assigned to Protestant canons. Secondly, the exercise of religion was regulated anew. The religious freedom granted by the Peace of Augsburg to the Lutherans was also extended to the Calvinists; as the “annus normalis,” decisive for the legitimacy of the possession and practice of religion by the confessions, the year 1624 was established instead of 1552 (the Peace of Augsburg), though the hereditary territories of the Habsburgs were excluded on the one hand, and for the Palatinate, Baden, and Württemberg it was brought forward to 1618 on the other. The “reservatum ecclesiasticum” was reaffirmed, but together with it the princes’ right to reform their territories, subject to the right of subjects to religious freedom if they had enjoyed it in 1624. Finally, the equality of the confessions in the composition of the Empire’s tribunals and deputations was emphasized. In the Diets, questions of religion were to be referred to delegations of the parties (Corpus catholicorum, Corpus evangelicorum) and were not to be the subject of majority decisions.

This peace marked, in the sphere of international politics, the beginning of the system of equilibrium, with the defeat of the hegemonic attempts of the House of Habsburg within Germany and in Europe; in the ecclesiastical sphere, 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 November 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 influence profoundly and for a long time the ecclesiastical law of that territory.