Diet of Augsburg

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Diet of Augsburg

The Diet of the Holy Roman Empire was an assembly of princes and nobles who convened to decide important matters of state and religion. In 1530, as the Protestant Reformation gathered force in Germany, Emperor Charles V, a determined defender of the Catholic Church, summoned the Diet to meet at Augsburg and invited Protestants to present a summary of their beliefs. The members of the Diet promulgated the twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Confession, written by the reformer Philipp Melanchthon, who based his work on the teachings of Martin Luther. The Augsburg Confession remains a central creed of Lutheranism. In 1547 the Diet met again after the defeat of Protestant forces by the emperor. Charles attempted to establish Catholicism as the supreme church, but many German princes ruled independently of the emperor and claimed the right to establish the church of their choice in their own territories. In 1555 the emperor and the Protestants arrived at the Peace of Augsburg, which recognized the rights demanded by the princes.