Diet of Augsburg in the context of "Fugger"

The term French–Habsburg rivalry (French: Rivalité franco-habsbourgeoise; German: Habsburgisch-französischer Gegensatz) describes the rivalry between France and the House of Habsburg. The Habsburgs headed an expansive and evolving empire that included, at various times, the Holy Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, Portugal through Iberian Union, Austria, Bohemia and Hungary from the Diet of Augsburg in the High Middle Ages until the dissolution of the monarchy following World War I in the late modern period.

In addition to holding the Austrian hereditary lands, the Habsburg dynasty ruled the Low Countries (1482–1794), Spain (1504–1700) and the Holy Roman Empire (1438–1806). All these lands were in personal union under Emperor Charles V. The expansion of the Habsburgs into western Europe increasingly led to border tensions with the Kingdom of France, which found itself encircled by Habsburg territory. The subsequent rivalry between the two powers became a cause for several conflicts. These include parts of the Anglo-French Wars (1066–1815), the War of the Burgundian Succession (1477–1482), the Italian Wars (1494–1559), the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), and the succession wars of Jülich (1609–1614), Mantua (1628–1631), Spain (1700–1713), Poland (1733–1736) and Austria (1740–1748).

The Book of Concord (1580) or Concordia (often referred to as the Lutheran Confessions) is the historic doctrinal standard recognized as authoritative by many Lutheran church bodies since the 16th century. It consists of ten creedal documents and is also known as the symbolical book of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The Book of Concord was published in German on June 25, 1580, in Dresden, the fiftieth anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg. The authoritative Latin edition was published in 1584 in Leipzig.

The Augsburg Confession (German: Augsburger Bekenntnis), also known as the Augustan Confession or the Augustana from its Latin name, Confessio Augustana, is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church and one of the most important documents of the Protestant Reformation. The Augsburg Confession was written in both German and Latin and was presented by a number of German rulers and free-cities at the Diet of Augsburg on 25 June 1530.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, had called on the Princes and Free Territories in Germany to explain their religious convictions in an attempt to restore religious and political unity in the Holy Roman Empire and rally support against the Ottoman invasion in the 16th-century Siege of Vienna. It is the fourth document contained in the Lutheran Book of Concord.

The Tetrapolitan Confession (Latin: Confessio Tetrapolitana, German: Vierstädtebekenntnis), also called the Strasbourg Confession or Swabian Confession, was an early Protestant confession of faith drawn up by Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito and presented to the Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg on 9 July 1530 on behalf of the four south German cities of Konstanz, Lindau, Memmingen and Strasbourg. (The name "Tetrapolitan" means "of the four cities".) The confession was based on an early draft of the Augsburg Confession to which Bucer and Capito had secretly obtained access, but amended in the direction of Zwinglianism. Its purpose was to prevent a schism within Protestantism. It is the oldest confession of the Reformed tradition produced in Germany.

Bucer and Capito were called to the Diet of Augsburg by the envoys of Strasbourg, who were aware that Philipp Melanchthon was working on a Saxon Confession that would represent the Lutheran position. The north Germans (Lutherans) and the south Germans and Swiss had been divided in opinion since 1524 on the subject of the Lord's Supper, with the Lutherans supporting sacramental union (the physical presence of Christ's body in the sacrament) and the Zwinglians memorialism (the sacrament as a spiritual memorial only). This division had reached its high point in the Marburg Colloquy between Zwingli and Luther in 1529.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession (German: Apologie des Augsburger Bekenntnisses) was written by Philipp Melanchthon during and after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg as a response to the Pontifical Confutation of the Augsburg Confession, Charles V's commissioned official Roman Catholic response to the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 25 June 1530. It was intended to be a defense of the Augsburg Confession and a refutation of the Confutation. It was signed as a confession of faith by leading Lutheran magnates and clergy at the meeting of the Smalkaldic League in February, 1537, and subsequently included in the German [1580] and Latin [1584] Book of Concord. As the longest document in the Book of Concord it offers the most detailed Lutheran response to the Roman Catholicism of that day as well as an extensive Lutheran exposition of the doctrine of Justification.

When the Imperial Circles (Latin: Circuli imperii; German: Reichskreise) — comprising a regional grouping of territories of the Holy Roman Empire — were created as part of the Imperial Reform at the 1500 Diet of Augsburg, many Imperial territories remained unencircled.

Initially six circles were established in order to secure and enforce the Public Peace (Landfrieden) declared by Emperor Maximilian I and the jurisdiction of the Reichskammergericht. They did not incorporate the territories of the Prince-electors and the Austrian homelands of the ruling House of Habsburg. Only at the 1512 Diet of Trier were these estates (except for the Kingdom of Bohemia) included in the newly implemented Burgundian, Austrian, Upper Saxon, and Electoral Rhenish circles, confirmed by the 1521 Diet of Worms.

During the early modern period, the Holy Roman Empire was divided into imperial circles (Latin: Circuli imperii; German: Reichskreise [ˈʁaɪçsˌkʁaɪzə]; singular: Circulus imperii, Reichskreis [ˈʁaɪçsˌkʁaɪs]), administrative groupings whose primary purposes were the organization of common defensive structure and the collection of imperial taxes. They were also used as a means of organization within the Imperial Diet and the Imperial Chamber Court. Each circle had a circle diet, although not every member of the circle diet would hold membership of the Imperial Diet as well.

Six imperial circles were introduced at the Diet of Augsburg in 1500. In 1512, three more circles were added, and the large Saxon Circle was split into two, so that from 1512 until the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in the Napoleonic era, there were ten imperial circles. The Crown of Bohemia, the Swiss Confederacy and Italy remained unencircled, as did various minor territories which held imperial immediacy and mostly regrouped the semi-official Kingdom of Germany and the remains of the Kingdom of Arles.