Before the Thirty Year’s War, Luther challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and

promoted the idea that individuals could interpret the Bible themselves rather than relying on
church doctrine. This sparked the rapid spread of Protestant beliefs and the establishment of
Protestant churches across many European territories. As Protestantism took hold, it fractured
the previously unified Christian Europe under the centralized authority of the Catholic Church.
Instead, Europe became a patchwork of Protestant and Catholic states and principalities with
deep religious divisions. Though the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 allowed rulers to choose the
official religion of their realms, animosities between Protestants and Catholics across different
territories remained high. This growing religious fragmentation and breakdown of Catholic
hegemony, initiated by Luther's Protestant movement decades earlier, laid the foundations for
the eruption of the Thirty Years' War. Therefore, the Thirty Years' War was overwhelmingly
driven by bitter religious animosity between Catholics and Protestants that had festered since
the Protestant Reformation, as demonstrated by how nations became involved strictly along
sectarian lines to defend their respective faiths.

For example, the open letter written by Matthias as sourced by document 1, exemplifies this.
This letter from Holy Roman Emperor Matthias is addressing concerns and rumors among his
Protestant subjects in Bohemia that their religious freedoms and rights may be taken away or
infringed upon. He assures his Protestant subjects that he has no intention of rescinding any
agreements or privileges related to religion between Catholics and Protestants in Bohemia.
Clearly, the audience of this letter are teh residents of Bohemia who feared the input of
Catholicism by Matthias. Now, while Matthias claims in this letter that he has "no intention of
rescinding the agreement between the religions" in Bohemia, his assurances ring hollow. As the
Catholic Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias had an inherent motivation to suppress Protestant
dissent and maintain Catholic hegemony. Despite his protestations, he remained a
representative of Catholic imperial power that felt threatened by the rise of Protestantism and
would have sought to contain its spread by any means necessary. This document lays bare the
underlying sectarian tensions, with Protestant Bohemians fearing for their rights and Matthias,
as the Catholic Emperor, being distrusted due to his vested interest in containing the spread of
the rival Protestant faith. This dynamic of bitter mutual suspicion strictly along religious lines
demonstrates how religious animosities that festered since the Reformation era were a driving
force behind the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War.

Indeed, document 4 – expressing the opinions of the Swedish King – confirms this. In this
document, Adolphus is fervently urging the Elector to abandon any pretense of neutrality and
openly join the Protestant cause in the ongoing Thirty Years' War against the Catholic forces of
the Holy Roman Emperor. The purpose of this letter is to obviously persuade and intimidate the
Elector of Brandenburg to support the Swedish. Adolphus makes the motivation of the Thirty
Years’ War clear by bluntly declearing that the Holy Roman Emperor's goal is to "root out the
Protestant religion" from the empire entirely. This reveals the deep religious motivations and
naked anti-Protestant agenda fueling the Emperor's prosecution of the war.

The Bohemian Federation’s constitution, as shown in document 2, further demonstrates the

religious motivations behind the Thirty Years’ War. This constitution was written by the
Bohemian Federation, a coalition of Protestant nobles and city governments, in 1619. With the
audience being the member states of the Federation, it outlines provisions to protect Calvinist
Protestant rights and religion within their territories. The document’s purpose is to codify
religious freedoms for Calvinists in response to infringement by Catholic powers. The
constitution even permits the member states to take defensive action if a king contravenes
these religious protections. This shows the Bohemian Federation organizing to defend
Protestantism in anticipation of conflict with Catholic powers, revealing the strong religious
motivations underlying the Thirty Years' War.

This report from Jesuit official Bernhard Baumann to the Elector of Bavaria, as shown in
document 3, provides further evidence of the religious motivations underlying the conflict. As a
representative of the Catholic Church, Baumann’s purpose in writing this 1628 report is to
update the Elector on the progress of re-Catholicization efforts in Protestant areas recently
conquered by Catholic forces, and reassure that catholicism is ahead of the conflict, even in the
presence of Protestant resistance. He notes that many territories have been freed from
“heresy,” as in Protestantism, and boasts of using “unbelievable deceptions” to convert the
population and stop their complaints to the Emperor about losing their Protestant faith.
Baumann’s own words demonstrate that forcibly stamping out Protestantism was a key priority
in areas brought under Catholic control during the war. This underscores how the Thirty Years’
War, despite political factors, was driven at its core by bitter sectarian struggle to expand one
faith at the other’s expense.

Moving on, the 1640 French allegorical image, shown in document 6, depicts Cardinal Richelieu
eliminating Protestant “heresy” in France while keeping Catholic powers restrained. The artist’s
purpose is to glorify Richelieu’s policies of suppressing French Protestants (Huguenots) while
maintaining a balance of power between France and the Catholic Habsburg powers of Spain and
Austria. The audience is the French public who would have understood the symbolism of
Richelieu depicted removing Huguenot “caterpillars” from the fleur-de-lis representing France,
be influenced of Richelieu’s policies regarding France. Meanwhile, Richelieu keeps Catholic
Spain and Austria restrained on chains, showing his policy of checking Habsburg power while
simultaneously crushing Protestant dissent within France itself. This reflects how religious
motives to stamp out Protestantism internally continued to influence French policy.
As the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Innocent X's purpose in issuing this papal declaration
in 1648 is to condemn the Treaty of Westphalia for granting religious concessions to Protestants.
He declares parts of the treaty "null and void" insofar as they undermine Catholic authority and
the Catholic religion. The Pope's intent is to reject any compromise with Protestants and uphold
the divine Catholic mission to maintain supremacy over Christendom as he views the settlement
as a loss for the Catholic side. Despite the treaty ending the war on political terms between
monarchs, Innocent X reveals the lingering religious motivations of Catholic leaders who refused
to fully relinquish their sectarian ambitions. The Pope's defiant rejection of the treaty's religious
compromises reflects how the Thirty Years' War, even at its conclusion, remained at its core a
bitter struggle for religious dominance.

Moreover, the Edict of Restitution issued by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II demonstrates
the religious zeal motivating the Catholic side during the war. This edict stripped Protestants of
any ecclesiastical lands they had secularized since the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and returned
those lands to the Catholic Church. The Edict Went even further than just re-Catholicizing
certain lands, as it asserted the Emperor's divine right to impose Catholicism wherever he ruled.
Its aggressive attempt to rollback Protestantism and re-impose Catholic supremacy reveals the
deeply religious motivations behind Ferdinand II's policies during the Thirty Years' War. The
Edict of Restitution shows that Catholic powers like Ferdinand were not just fighting to maintain
a political balance, but to affirmatively spread their faith across the Holy Roman Empire by
force.

While religious divisions were a major driver, political interests also shaped how rulers and
nations became involved in the conflict. For example, France's participation was driven not just
by Cardinal Richelieu's anti-Protestant policies at home, but by the political aim of weakening
the power of the Habsburg dynasty that ruled the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. Though
starting as a religious struggle, political calculations increasingly influenced the later stages of
the war. At the same time, religious and political motives were often closely intertwined. Rulers
like Ferdinand II pursued aggressive religious policies like the Edict of Restitution both out of
Catholic zeal and to assert imperial political authority over the princes of the Empire. Political
power was viewed as a means to achieve religious aims. The degree to which religious fervor
versus political power-seeking drove the conflict also shifted over the course of the war and
varied between different participants. While the war began as a religious struggle between
Bohemian Protestants and the Catholic Habsburgs, the motives grew more political as other
European powers intervened in the conflict.
While religious divisions were a major driver, political interests also shaped how rulers and
nations became involved in the conflict. For example, the 1640 French allegorical image in
document 6 depicts Richelieu eliminating Protestant "heresy" while restraining Catholic powers,
reflecting the complex intersection of religion and politics. On one hand, Richelieu advances
religious motives by suppressing French Protestants out of Catholic zeal. However, as a
politique, Richelieu was also willing to disregard faith for raison d'état and political unity. His
suppression of Protestants serves the political end of strengthening royal authority and unifying
France under one Catholic faith. In removing the Huguenot "caterpillars" from the French
fleur-de-lis, Richelieu achieves the dual political and religious aims of purging dissent and
increasing internal cohesion. His shrewd balancing of political interests and religious ideology
demonstrates the nuanced relationship between the two in motivating policies during the
Thirty Years' War.

In conclusion, while political motivations increasingly influenced the course of the Thirty Years'
War, religious tensions were the overriding factor that sparked and fueled the conflict. The
animosity festering between Catholics and Protestants since the Reformation provided the basis
for the outbreak of fighting. Documents from both sides reveal deep religious motivations, as
evidenced by Matthias' assurances to Bohemian Protestants, Adolphus' call for Protestant unity
against Catholic forces, and the Bohemian Federation's provisions to defend Calvinism. Even
later in the war, the zeal to achieve religious aims persisted, as reflected in Baumann's reports of
forced conversions and Pope Innocent X's refusal to compromise Catholic authority.