Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Wars of Religion

In the first half of the seventeenth century Europe worked out, by political and military means, the consequences of the religious reformation. It was the age of the wars of religion. In France, three decades of civil war between Catholic and Calvinist came to an end in 1598 when the Calvinist leader, Henri de Navarre, having converted to Rome and succeeded to the throne as Henri IV, established by the Edict of Nantes toleration for Calvinists within a Catholic state. In 1618 the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II formed a Catholic League to fight the German Protestant princes; it defeated the Protestant elector Frederick V at the battle of the White Mountain near Prague, and reimposed Catholicism in Bohemia. But this Catholic victory was followed by a succesion of Protestant victories won by the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus. After his death the Thirty Years War was brought to an end in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia, which established co-existence in the Empire between the two religions.