The Peace of Westphalia

After prolonged negotiations, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years' War. France expanded to the Rhine, and Sweden gained territories on the Baltic and North Sea. The German princes gained strength at the emperor's expense.

Freedom of worship was extended to Catholics, Lutherans and the Reformed alike. Property was restored to its 1624 owners. Toleration arose more from exhaustion than from love, planting the seed of the idea of the secular state.

The peace ended devastating interconfessional wars and undermined confidence in doctrinal disputes. Twentieth-century theologians see it as a likely social and political precondition for the later Enlightenment.