What are the terms of the peace of Augsburg?

Answer 1

The Peace of Augsburg effectively ended the first round of the in-fighting between Protestant (as they were by this time called) and Catholic nobles in the Holy Roman Empire (HRE). The peace made the division of 'Christendom' (i.e. Western European Christian states) legal and increased the independence of the various petty states of the HRE, leading to its decline into mere ceremony and eventual dissolution at the hands of Napoleon in 1806.

In specific terms it established 'Cuius region, eius religio', meaning that each ruler could decide whether Catholicism or Lutheranism was to be practised in his (never her) patrimony. A corollary of this was that there was a grace period in which families could move to states with their religion as the established one.

The increasing independence of the local rulers was not intended, but came as an inevitable complement to this concession from the Emperor. Establishing the right to conclude treaties with foreign powers and the elevation of Calvinism to the same status as that of Lutheranism and Catholicism would take nearly a century (1648) and the end of a very bloody series of wars.