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The Protestant Union or Evangelical Union ((ドイツ語:Protestantische Union)) was a coalition of Protestant German states that was formed in 1608 by Elector Palatine Frederick IV to defend the rights, lands and person of each member. It was formed after the Holy Roman Emperor and Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria reestablished Roman Catholicism in Donauwörth in 1607 and after a majority of the Imperial Diet had decided in 1608 that the renewal of the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 should be conditional upon the restoration of all church land appropriated since 1552. The Protestant Princes met in Auhausen, near Nördlingen and on May 14, 1608, formed a military league under the leadership of Frederick IV of the Palatinate. In response, the Catholic League was formed in the following year, headed by Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. Members of the Protestant Union included the Palatinate, Anhalt, Neuburg, Württemberg, Baden-Durlach, Ansbach, Bayreuth, Hesse-Kassel, Brandenburg and cities including Ulm, Speyer, Strasbourg, and Nuremberg. The Protestant Union was weakened from the start by the non-participation of several powerful Protestant rulers, such as the Elector of Saxony. The Union was also beset by internal strife between its Lutheran and Calvinist members. In 1619 Frederick V of the Palatinate (successor to Frederick IV) accepted the crown of Bohemia, and in 1620 the Protestant Union signed the Treaty of Ulm, declining to support him. In January 1621, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II imposed the Ban of the Empire upon Frederick V and gave his electorate and the Upper Palatinate to Maximilian. The Protestant Union met in Heilbronn in February and formally protested the actions of Ferdinand. Ferdinand ignored this complaint and ordered the Protestant Union to disband its army. In May, under the Mainz Accord, the members of the Protestant Union complied with Ferdinand's demand and, on 24 May 1621, formally dissolved the Protestant Union. The Protestant Union developed in order to resist all hierarchic and un-Protestant tendencies within the different churches, and the preservation of the rights, honor, and liberty of German Protestantism. The Union also strove to maintain the Christian respect among the various denominations and their members.〔http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc09/htm/iv.v.xlvi.htm〕 ==Bohemian Revolt== The Protestant Union became very active during the early 17th century following the election of Ferdinand II to the crown. The letter of Majesty had guaranteed the rights of Protestants, among them religious freedom. However, it was ambiguous on one point: whether lands of the Catholic Church were held from the King. If they were, then Protestants could build churches and worship freely on these crown lands; if not, then the Catholic landholder could prohibit Protestantism on his ecclesiastical property. But in 1617 the ecclesiastical rulers of Broumov and Hroby took over or destroyed Protestant churches and forbid further heretical worship. This angered the Protestant Union and so they defiantly assembled in Prague on May 23, 1618 and went into the chamber of four Catholic Lord Regents in what is known as the Second Defenestration of Prague. This was a key point in the Protestant Union because it was a time when they were defiant of the Emperor in order to preserve the Protestant rights they had received in the Peace of Augsburg and in the Letter to Majesty.〔http://www.pipeline.com/~cwa/Bohemian_Phase.htm〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Protestant Union」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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