European Religious Peace Agreements – A Digital Edition

One of the great challenges facing Europe in the 21st century is to ensure the peaceful coexistence of religions. Constructive engagement with religious and confessional plurality is a task that has accompanied European history since its earliest days. The emergence of religious peace agreements since the 16th century has been a guiding principle for all modern developments. They represent a decisive factor for the constitution of the modern European state. At the same time, they provide deep insights into the handling of religious coexistence and the development of the idea of tolerance, enabling us to understand today's religious plurality and deal with it appropriately. Early modern religious peace agreements are legal regulations of confessional coexistence that appeared in various forms, such as treaties, Reichstag resolutions, edicts, mandates, etc. They are found not only in the well-known truces (ceasefires) and religious peace treaties of the 16th century, such as the “Augsburger Religionsfrieden” (1555) (Religious Peace of Augsburg) or the Edict of Nantes (1598), but also in inter-state peace accords, trade and alliance treaties, and marriage contracts between partners of different denominations among the nobility. Religious peace agreements also guaranteed tolerance for those who would have been accused of heresy and persecuted under the religious laws of the time. In this respect, they were pivotal in shaping the development of religious freedom and tolerance. They reshaped the relationship between religion and politics in Europe, laid the foundations for modern religious law and paved the way for the modern era.

This long‑term project will, for the first time, edit and publish open‑access digital editions (with German and English introductions) of all European religious peace agreements from 1485 (the Kuttenberg Diet decision) to 1791 (the “Constitution Française”). It will document the complex emergence of a religious peace culture within the “communication space of Europe”, make it accessible in novel ways and contribute to a revised perception of Europe, its history and its handling of religious diversity – thereby providing a key to understanding contemporary challenges. The project will employ innovative digital methods, advance their development, set new standards for digital editing and support the training of early‑career researchers.