Flailingly, five Lutheran princes had sought to put this process on an official footing. In 1529, summoned to an imperial diet, they had dared to object to measures passed there by the Catholic majority by issuing a formal ‘Protestation’. By 1546, when Luther died, commending his spirit into the hands of the God of Truth, other princes too had come to be seen as ‘Protestant’ – and not only in the empire.
