Catholicism and the wars of religion

The European wars of religion were a series of religious wars waged in Europe from 1524 to 1648, following the onset of the Protestant Reformation in Central, Western and Northern Europe. The conflicts ended with the Peace of Westphalia recognizing three separate Christian traditions in the Holy Roman Empire: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism, otherwise known as the Reformed tradition.

The wars were strongly influenced by the religious change of the period and the conflict and rivalry that it produced. Nevertheless, the combatants cannot be neatly categorised by religion, nor were they divided by religion alone.

Individual conflicts that may be distinguished within this topic include:

Although later wars such as the Nine Years' War (1688–1697) had a religious component that was important locally in some arenas, they were more fundamentally undertaken for political reasons, with coalitions forming across religious divisions. Purely political motivations and cross-religious alliances were also significant in many of the earlier wars.

The Holy Roman Empire, encompassing present-day Germany and surrounding territory, was the 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, the Landgraviate of 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.

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