An Inevitable War? 35the courts, but which were implicitly threatened by Catholic claims for
restitution if precedents were set. As time had passed possession had
begun to seem like nine points of the law, but the Protestant holders of
the properties still felt insecure enough to back the politically motivated
agitators in an effort to establish full legal ownership. On the other side
many Catholic princes, including the ecclesiastical electors, feared that
Protestant victories in the courts might trigger off new secularisations,
putting even their own territories at risk. In the circumstances a legal
stalemate may have been the lesser hazard.
The apprehensions of both sides, while understandable, nevertheless
related primarily to future possibilities rather than to current events,
as it is noteworthy that relevant cases mentioned in research literature
almost all relate to disputes which originated well before 1600. Eighty
years after Luther’s Theses the tide had turned, so that new conversions
among the prominent were more likely to be from Protestant to Catholic
than vice versa. Likewise many princes had used theirius reformandiin
the first quarter of a century after 1555 to enforce religious conformity
in their domains, often taking over Catholic property as a result, but
this had also run its course. On the other hand very few secularisations
had actually been reversed, leaving the Protestants in practical posses-
sion of what they had gained. For a time at least, stalemate equated to
stability.
It is also pertinent to note that while the most intractable cases
remained deadlocked many others, even ones with religious aspects,
continued to be settled. In the 1590s the Hofrat frequently appointed
commissioners to mediate between the parties, often successfully, thus
avoiding the need for a formal verdict. The Kammergericht also sought
to facilitate compromises, even in the ‘four cloisters’ cases, or as in
a dispute between the Protestant city of Nuremberg and the Catholic
bishop of Bamberg, which started around 1591 and eventually reached
the court, before finally being settled by agreement between the parties
in 1607.^17
Thus in the early years of the seventeenth century the courts were
by no means crippled, and in the great majority of cases they con-
tinued to function essentially as before rather than contributing to a
crisis of Imperial institutions. Ruthmann stresses the point: ‘It must be
accepted that the thesis of a “paralysis of Imperial justice” is not ten-
able....At most one can speak of a partial incapacitation.’^18 The inability
to resolve a relatively small number of cases with religious implications,
particularly concerning property, was certainly a serious weakness, but
its main significance was the opportunity for making political capital