The German imperial diets in the 1540s

Abstract

SUMMARY After nine years without meetings because of the deadlock over the Reformation, the German Reichstag met eight times between 1541 and 1548 to attempt once more to reach a religious settlement and also to confront both the renewed Ottoman threat in the East and Emperor Charles V's conflict with Francis I of France. Nine recently published volumes of the proceedings of four of the diets of the 1540s reveal how their working had become even more cumbersome than it had been at the end of the fifteenth century. Henry Cohn first examines the special circumstances of imperial politics and finances which explain the laborious nature of the diet and its increasing consumption of both time and paper. Thereafter an assessment is attempted of the degree of success which the diets had in dealing with the problems of the Empire. They are shown to have prepared the way for the religious settlement of 1555 which contributed greatly to preserving the peace for 63 years while Western Europe was embroiled in confessional wars. Moreover, by revealing the shortcomings of the imperial constitution, the diets of the 1540s also set parameters for the constitutional changes of 1555 which remained largely in place until the end of the Holy Roman Empire.