Peace of Augsburg
Ferdinand promulgates the Peace of Augsburg
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The emperor named in the document never signed it. His brother Ferdinand did.
25 September 1555, at Augsburg
At Augsburg on 25 September 1555, King Ferdinand publicly promulgated the imperial recess containing the Religious Peace, in Emperor Charles V's name and under delegated imperial authority.
Ferdinand and vice-chancellor Jakob Jonas signed the recess, and representatives of the imperial estates affixed seals for the electors, princes, prelates, counts, lords and imperial cities. Charles V did not personally sign it.
This was not a bilateral treaty with the Schmalkaldic League, which had disbanded in 1547.
Two confessions, and no others
The settlement prohibited Catholic and Augsburg-Confession estates from waging war on or coercing one another because of religion, giving Lutheran imperial estates legal protection alongside Catholic ones.
It protected only those two. Section 17 excluded all other confessions from the peace without naming them individually, and prescribed no death penalty for them.
Under section 24, dissenting subjects could leave with their spouses and children and sell their possessions. People under servile obligations had to pay customary release charges and arrears rather than being categorically denied emigration.
The slogan that is not in the text
The maxim cuius regio, eius religio summarizes part of the settlement accurately, but does not occur in the 1555 text; the Latin formulation was coined later.
The recess preserved both Catholic and Lutheran worship in imperial cities where both were already practised, and required the two communities to leave one another undisturbed.
A separate document, the Declaratio Ferdinandea, had been issued the day before, on 24 September. It was not printed with the recess, and its legal force was contested after 1555.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 4 sources not yet audited
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What the sources leave uncertain
- The familiar maxim cuius regio, eius religio accurately summarizes part of the settlement but does not occur in the 1555 text; the Latin formulation was coined later.
- The Declaratio Ferdinandea was a separate document issued on 24 September. It was not printed with the recess, and its legal force was contested after 1555.
- The ecclesiastical reservation was imposed under Ferdinand's delegated authority despite the estates' failure to agree on it.