Confessio Augustana

Written by Philip Melanchthon for the Augsburg Diet of 1530, the Confession was presented by five princes and two cities in order to illustrate the changes introduced in their territories following the Lutheran inspiration. Melanchthon took up and reformulated previous professions of faith trying, on the one hand, to quell the internal fractures to the Protestant movement and, on the other, to show a continuity with the Catholic theological and institutional tradition. In those years in fact, deep rifts had emerged inside the reformed front, and discussions attempting to overcome them had multiplied. Background political events – primarily the prospect of a weak Christian front facing the Turkish threat – made essential an attempt to take a unified position on many controversial issues. The articles of Schwabach and Thurgau, together with those derived from the Colloquium of Marburg, formed the starting points for Melanchthon who, instructed by Luther himself, was in charge of bringing order to the theological and ecclesiological situation. An uneasy situation also within the reformed formation, which among other things, witnessed the controversy about the real presence – according to the Lutheran interpretation – or symbolic, in the Zwinglian, the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. While acknowledging the reported abuses, Rome refused any form of solution that went against its own tradition, considering it a guarantee of universal agreement as founded on Peter’s mandate and the apostolic heritage.