Augsburg, Peace of

Religious settlement following the Diet of Augsburg of 1555, which established the right of princes in the Holy Roman Empire (rather than the Emperor himself) to impose a religion on their subjects – later summarized by the maxim cuius regio, eius religio (‘whose realm it is, his the religion’). The ruler's religion could be either Catholic or Lutheran; the agreement's failure to consider the increasingly important Calvinist movement was one of the difficulties that led to the confessional strife of the early 17th century.