Alpha Book

Following up its successes, the Catholic League prevailed upon the
Emperor Ferdinand II in the same year (1629) to sign the Edict of
Restitution, restoring to the Church all the property that had been
secularized in violation of the peace of Augsburg of 1555. The edict
was to be executed by imperial commissioners, all of whom were
Catholics, and so well did they do their work that, within three years
of the promulgation of the edict, Roman Catholicism in the Germanies
had recovered five bishoprics, thirty Hanse towns, and nearly a hundred
monasteries, to say nothing of parish churches of which the number can
hardly be estimated.
So far, the religious and economic grievances against the Habsburgs had
been confined mainly to Calvinists, but now the Lutheran princes were
alarmed. The enforcement of the Edict of Restitution against all
Protestants alike was the signal for an emphatic protest from Lutherans
as well as from Calvinists. A favorable opportunity for intervention
seemed to present itself to the foremost Lutheran power--Sweden.


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