ABSTRACT
It is common and appropriate, for accounts of the origins of the Thirty Years War to begin with the religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555 – not because that treaty settled forever the political-religious issues that had created so much turmoil in Germany for some years previously, but because it did not, thereby demonstrating that the time had not yet arrived when the raging waters of the religious conflict could be dammed up by good (or not so good) intentions and mere signatures on any one or several pieces of paper.
