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In the Holy Roman Empire, there were very many ecclesiastical principalities and they ranged in size from a small town to large territories, often containing significant urban centers such as Cologne. The Treaty after protracted negotiations had to deal with the issue of ecclesiastics who converted to Lutheranism. The Catholic side was concerned that if a bishop or another religious leader converted that his realm would become Lutheran. This had happened during the Reformation. The Head of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, originally an order of warrior-monks had converted to Protestantism and as a result all the Prussian territories had become Protestant. The Catholics demanded that any bishop or religious leader that had converted to Lutheranism should return his realm as by rights their lands belonged to the Catholic Church. However, those bishops and others who had converted refused to return their lands and became the secular ruler of the former ecclesiastical principalities. This was a source of continuing tension between the Protestants and the Catholics and many of the latter believed that the Protestant side had not respected or fully implemented the treaty of Augsburg. This led to frequent clashes between both members of both confessions over the future of Episcopal principalities. For example, in the Cologne War (1583-1588), when the prince-archbishop became a Protestant it led to a brutal sectarian war between Catholics and Lutherans. One of the principal causes of the Thirty Years War was the ‘lack of clarity over the status of these episcopal princedoms’<ref> Wilson. p 67</ref>.
==Dividing Christendom==
The Settlement of Augsburg effectively led to the partition of Germany into two separate confessional blocs, one Catholic and the other Protestant, even though they all inhabited the Holy Roman Empire. It wanted to establish a balance of power between them to ensure peace in the Empire. The settlement did succeed in establishing a balance of power in Germany but it was never a stable one and it only lasted so long because the Hapsburgs were distracted elsewhere. The Augsburg Treaty had effectively partitioned not only the Holy Roman Empire but also Christendom<ref> Hale, p. 118</ref>. This was the old concept of a common realm that was Christian. After the Peace of Augsburg Germany was composed of two separate confessions who did not trust each other and thought each other heretics. They both sought to gain an advantage over the other and to increase their territory at the expense of the other. The settlement of Augsburg did end a war but it also copper-fastened the division on the Empire into a Catholic and a Protestant bloc. When the balance of power broke down in 1618, these two mutually hostile religions began a war that was unprecedented in its loss of life and destruction<ref>Wilson, p. 656</ref>.
==Conclusion==
The Peace of Augsburg was intended to give Germany a lasting peace and to give it a religious settlement that would prevent future religious wars. The settlement was successful in the sense that it did prevent a general religious war in Germany and Central Europe until 1618. However, the settlement reached at Augsburg in 1555 was fundamentally unstable and its failure was almost guaranteed. Those who drafted the treaty failed to recognize that the growth of Calvinism would destabilize it and increase sectarian tensions in the Empire. Because they were not covered by the terms of the treaty they often worked against it and this was to lead to conflict in Bohemia that triggered the Thirty Years War. Then the settlement did not resolve the status of episcopal principalities whose bishop had converted to Lutheranism and this was to poison relations between both sides for decades. Perhaps the most significant failure of the settlement was that it created two mutually hostile blocs, and there was no mechanism designed by the settlement to defuse tensions or to resolve conflicts. This led to the collapse of the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years War, one of the greatest tragedies in Europe’s long history.
