Background
Delegates from the various factions had met at Haguenau in 1540 and at Worms in January 1541 but the latter session of the Imperial Diet was adjourned by the Emperor Charles V as the Diet was preparing to meet at Regensburg. The subject for debate was to be the Augsburg Confession, the primary doctrinal statement of the Protestant movement, and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, a defence of the Confession written by Philipp Melancthon.
On December 15, 1540, a secret conference took place between Johann Gropper, canon of Cologne, and Gerhard Veltwick, the Imperial secretary, on the one side and Butzer and Capito, the delegates of Protestant Strasbourg, on the other. The two sides agreed their positions on original sin and justification, but the promise made by the Catholic party at Haguenau, to negotiate on the basis of the Confession and Apology, was withdrawn.
Early in 1541, Butzer sent a draft of the conclusions to Joachim II, Elector of Brandenburg, with the request to communicate it to Luther and the other princes of the Protestant league. The document was essentially identical with the later so-called Regensburg Book, which formed the basis of the Regensburg Conference in place of the Augsburg Confession.
It was divided into twenty-three articles, some of which closely approached the Protestant view; but it decided no questions of dogma and did not exclude the Catholic positions. On February 13, 1541, the book reached the hands of Luther. In spite of the apparent concessions made in regard to the doctrine of justification, he perceived that the proposed articles of agreement could be accepted by neither party.
Read more about this topic: Diet Of Regensburg (1541)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)