The Peace of Westphalia

OCT 24 1648 · 12:00

The Historic Town Hall of Münster, whose Friedenssaal hosted the signing of the Treaty of Münster on 24 October 1648. Place: Münster (Empire and France) and Osnabrück (Empire and Sweden), Westphalia Figures: Maximilian Graf Trauttmansdorff, imperial · Henri II d'Orléans-Longueville, French · Johan Oxenstierna, Swedish · Fabio Chigi, papal nuncio in Cologne and mediator at Münster (later Pope Alexander VII) Five Years at Two Tables Negotiations begin formally in 1643 and last five and a half years. The Catholic powers cannot share a table with Protestants without compromising their own theology; the solution is two cathedral towns, thirty miles apart, with mounted couriers shuttling drafts between them. Münster handles the Empire-France treaty and the Spain-Dutch Republic settlement; Osnabrück handles the Empire-Sweden treaty and the imperial constitution. Much of the diplomacy concerns precedence and procedure: which delegation enters which door first, who sits where, what title each negotiator is addressed by. These are not trivia. They are the questions the new system is being built to answer at scale. What the Treaty Settles The settlement does several things at once. It extends cuius regio, eius religio from 1555 to include Calvinism alongside Lutheranism and Catholicism, ending confessional war as an organizing principle of European politics. It recognizes the Dutch Republic and the Swiss Confederation as independent states. It awards territory to France (Alsace cities) and Sweden (Western Pomerania, Bremen, Verden). And it formalizes the principle that the sovereign of a state has supreme authority within its borders, and other sovereigns shall not intervene in matters within that domestic jurisdiction. Pope Innocent X denounces the treaty as null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, and devoid of meaning for all time. The signatories ignore him. The Westphalian system has begun. Video: Westphalia as the resolution of the 17th-century crisis of religion, state, and dynasty.