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Divided by Toleration: Paradoxical Effects of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and Multiconfessionalism

In early 1647 delegations in Osnabrück at the Congress ofWestphalia started formulating the terms for what would become, on October 24, 1648, the greatest measure of religious toleration taken in the history of the Holy Roman Empire: the Imperial estates’ recognition of the exact equality of the Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed faiths.1 Negotiations concerning them had begun in early 1646, and after a year of wrestling over the setting of the so-called normal or normative year (Normaljahr, the reference point for religious practice and the permanent possession of ecclesiastical properties), the delegations pushed forward on resolving other disputes concerning religion.2 By June 1647 they had come to terms on many of these matters,3 terms that would mark the Empire’s official end as a singular Christian realm and its beginning as a multiconfessional one.4 The establishment of this new legal framework might have settled points of religious dispute, but as attested by the Imperial territories examined in the pages below – the county of Hanau-Münzenberg, landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, and Imperial abbey of Fulda – it also inadvertently spawned a host of new ones. In the case of City Hanau in Hanau-Münzenberg, it did so almost immediately.