16 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
was the objective, rather than merely seeking to defend the confessional
status quo’.^12
As a result the Lutherans found themselves under pressure from two
sides at a time when they were already facing a crisis. Following the
death of Luther himself in 1546 there was no central doctrinal author-
ity, and conflicting theological views threatened to lead to splits, which
would have been particularly dangerous as the peace of Augsburg gave
protection only to those Protestants who subscribed to the Augsburg
Confession. The Lutheran princes were more alert to the risk than the
theologians, and only they had the authority to bring the disputatious
clerics to heel. Hence, led by the elector of Saxony, they provided the
impetus for the discussions which eventually led to the Formula of Con-
cord of 1577 and the corresponding Book of Concord of 1580, which in
due course was subscribed to by 50 princes, 38 free Imperial cities and
more than 8000 pastors. Nevertheless, and well illustrating the prob-
lem, this comprised only about two-thirds of German Lutherans, and
the Concord was also not accepted in the Scandinavian countries or
England.^13 Moreover it was ‘a rigidly anti-Calvinist confession of faith
which made compromise between the two principal groups in German
Protestantism impossible once and for all’, and by the early years of
the seventeenth century Lutheran theologians in Saxony and elsewhere
considered the Calvinists to be worse enemies than the Catholics.^14
The Empire, 1580 to
Disputes were not unusual in the Empire, and indeed there was a long
history of clashes, particularly over property and inheritances, which
had not only kept the Imperial courts busy but had also sometimes
erupted into localised violence. Confessional differences added a new
source of conflict in the mid-sixteenth century, as well as frequently
becoming an additional factor in quarrels which were not inherently
concerned with religious issues. For several decades such dissension was
largely confined to the local level, but this started to change in the
1580s.
The first issue to escalate into a political confrontation concerned
the rights of ecclesiastical territories which had fallen under Protestant
control. The separation of the spiritualities and the temporalities of a
see was a long-established principle, so that following a new election
the pope confirmed a bishop in his spiritual office, whereas the feudal
overlord confirmed his rights in respect of the associated lands. Such
things often moved slowly in medieval and early modern times, but