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Peace Treaties of Westphalia (October 14/24, 1648)*

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§32. [General Restoration of Rights.] Whoever has been disturbed or in any manner deprived of what they had in 1624 is to be truly and fully restored without exception. [ . . . ]

§34. [Toleration of Non-Conforming Subjects.] (11) It has also been agreed that those adherents of the Augsburg Confession who are subjects of the Catholics, and the Catholic subjects of the estates of the Augsburg Confession who had no public or private exercise of their religion at any time in the year 1624, and who at some time following the peace’s publication shall profess and embrace a religion different from that of the lord of their territory, shall be patiently tolerated and have liberty of conscience, and shall not be hindered in attending their devotions held privately in their homes. They shall not be prohibited from participating in the public exercise of religion in their vicinities as often as they wish, nor prohibited from sending their children to foreign schools of their own confession, nor from having them instructed at home by private teachers. Yet the said freeholders, vassals, and subjects shall perform their duty in all other things with due obedience and submission, and without any disturbance or commotion.

§35. [Guarantee of Properties of Non-Conforming Subjects.] Subjects—whether Catholic or of the Augsburg Confession—shall not be condemned anywhere on account of their religion nor excluded from the communities of merchants, artisans, or companies nor deprived of successions, legacies, hospitals, lazar houses, or alms houses and other privileges or rights, including the use of churchyards and the honor of burial. Nothing more shall be exacted from them for the costs of their funerals than the dues usually paid for graves in parish churches. In these and all other similar things, they shall be treated in the same manner as brethren and sisters with equal justice and protection.

§36. [Toleration of Subjects Who Convert to a Different Religion.] If a subject who possessed [the right to] neither public nor private exercise of his religion in the year 1624, or who changes his religion after the publication of the peace, shall have a mind to change his religion or be willing to change his abode or be ordered by the lord of the manor to emigrate, then he shall be free to sell his properties or to have them administered by his relations, to visit them freely without any letters of passport, and to do this as often as is required to prosecute his affairs, conduct legal business, and pay his debts. [ . . . ]

§50. [Proscription of Religious Polemics.] The magistrates of both religions shall strictly forbid any person to impugn, publicly or privately, by preaching, teaching, disputing, writing, or opinion, the Treaty of Passau [1552], the Religious Peace [1555], or this declaration and treaty. Nor shall anyone attack, cast doubt upon, or derive contentious arguments from them. [ . . . ]

§52. [Religious Conflicts Settled by Negotiation, Not Majority Rule.] In religious and all other affairs in which the estates cannot be considered as one body, and when the Catholic estates and those of the Augsburg Confession are divided into two parties, the dispute is to be decided by amicable agreement alone, and neither side is to be bound by a majority vote.

The issue of decision by majority vote on taxation matters, however, which the present assembly could not decide, is referred to the next session of the Diet. [ . . . ]




(11) This article effectively abolished the right (later named “whose the rule, his the religion”) of Imperial princes to require either conformity in religion or emigration.

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