Corpus Catholicorum

This article is about a political institution of the old empire. For the book series of the same name see Corpus Catholicorum (series) .

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The Corpus Catholicorum is the name given to the union of the Catholic imperial estates at the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire . The Board had Kurmainz held. In contrast to the Corpus Evangelicorum , the evangelical association of imperial estates, the Catholic one was rather loosely structured and only met sporadically. One reason for this was that the Catholic imperial estates actually did not consider the two bodies to be legally valid, another that the Catholic side, through the emperor and the archbishop of Mainz in his function as imperial arch chancellor, already had a structural preponderance, which was due to the chairmanship of the imperial council - was strengthened alternately by the Archduchy of Austria and the Prince Archbishopric of Salzburg .

One of the essential constitutional achievements of the Peace of Westphalia lay in the establishment of the two denominational interest groups and their growing into the constitutional structure of the Reich . Previously, the majority principle had always applied in the interpretation of questions of doubt, e.g. the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555, which were of a denominational or religious nature.

In the last decades of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century it was no longer possible to resolve the main theological issues within the constitutional framework of the empire. The result was the paralysis of the various imperial organs and finally the formation of the Protestant Union on the one hand in 1608 and the Catholic League on the other hand in 1609 with the aim of protecting religious peace against attacks by the other side.

If it was not possible to integrate these extra-constitutional alliances into the constitution before and during the Thirty Years' War , the Corpus Evangelicorum and Corpus Catholicorum can ultimately be regarded as ideal successors to these defensive alliances. By indirectly integrating the estates of both denominations into the constitutional structure, it was possible to establish a constitutional order of peace that was sustainable, at least from a denominational perspective.

literature

• Brockhaus Conversations-Lexikon Vol. 7. Amsterdam 1809, pp. 243-246 online