The Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, encompassing present-day Germany and portions of neighbouring lands, was the single area most devastated by the Wars of Religion. The Empire was a fragmented collection of semi-independent states with an elected Holy Roman Emperor as its head; after the 14th century, this position was usually held by a Habsburg. The Austrian House of Habsburg was a major European power in its own right, ruling over some eight million subjects in present day Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. The Empire also contained regional powers, such as Bavaria, the Electorate of Saxony, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the Electorate of the Palatinate, Hesse, the Archbishopric of Trier and Württemberg. A vast number of minor independent duchies, free imperial cities, abbeys, bishoprics, and small lordships of sovereign families rounded out the Empire.
Lutheranism, from its inception at Wittenberg in 1519, found a ready reception in Germany, as well as in formerly Hussite Bohemia. The preaching of Martin Luther and his many followers raised tensions across Europe.
In Northern Germany, Luther adopted the stratagem of gaining the support of the local princes in his struggle to take over and re-establish the church along Lutheran lines. The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse and other North German princes not only protected Luther from retaliation from the edict of outlawry issued by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, but also used state power to enforce the establishment of Lutheran worship in their lands. Church property was seized and Catholic worship was forbidden in most lands which adopted the Lutheran reformation. The political conflicts thus engendered within the Empire led almost inevitably to war.
Read more about this topic: European Wars Of Religion
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“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“Public money is like holy water; everyone helps himself to it.”
—Italian proverb, pt. 5, epigraph, Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty (1989)
“As no one can tell what was the Roman pronunciation, each nation makes the Latin conform, for the most part, to the rules of its own language; so that with us of the vowels only A has a peculiar sound.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)