Westphalia

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia was, David Hart argues, not so much the conclusion of the wars of religion as the cause; that is, it was the victory of nationalism over imperialism and Christendom. Henri Daniel-Rops says, “The Treaties of Westphalia finally sealed the relinquishment by statesmen of a noble and ancient concept . . . which deominated the Middle Ages: that there existed among the baptized people of Europe a bond stronger than all their motives for wrangling – a spiritual bond, the concept of Christendom. Since the fourteenth century, and especially during the fifteenth, this concept had been steadily disintegrating . . . . The Thirty Years’ War proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the last states to defend the ideal of a united Christian Europe were invoking the principle while in fact they aimed at maintaining or imposing their own supremacy.”