page_title: Hanau-Münzenberg
section_title: Second Reformation
hierarchical_section_title: Hanau-Münzenberg / History / Second Reformation
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Der Graf Philipp Ludwig II. (Hanau-Münzenberg) (1576-1612)
context_page_description: The County of Hanau-Münzenberg was a territory within the Holy Roman Empire. It emerged when the County of Hanau was divided in 1458, the other part being the county of Hanau-Lichtenberg. Due to common heirs both counties were merged from 1642 to 1685 and from 1712 to 1736. In 1736 the last member of the House of Hanau died and the Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel inherited the county.
context_section_description: When Philipp Ludwig I died in 1580 another guardianship had to be installed for the benefit of his successor, Philipp Ludwig II, still a minor. Guardians became the Counts John VI, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg (1536–1606), Louis I, Count of Sayn-Wittgenstein (1568–1607) and Philipp IV, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (1514–1590), who was replaced in 1585 by his son, Count Philipp V of Hanau-Lichtenberg (1541–1599). The dominating figure in this constallation became the Count of Nassau. Additionally Philipp Ludwig's widowed mother, Countess Magdalena of Waldeck, remarried on 9 December 1581 Count John VII, the Middle, of Nassau-Siegen (1561–1623), the son of Count John IV. In consequence Philipp Ludwig II and his younger brother, Count Albrecht, joined the Nassau-Dillenburg court, a centre of the Reformation movement in Germany and closely tied to the Electorate of the Palatinate of the Rhine. The new ideas he encountered here greatly influenced his life and policies. By using his rights under the Cuius regio, eius religio rule, he changed the confession of his county to Calvinism in 1593. He succeeded with this nearly eveywhere in his sphere of influence, except in a few villages in the district Bornheimerberg, which surrounded Frankfurt and the condominiums shared with the Roman Catholic archbishop-elector of Mainz. The villages in the vicinity of Frankfurt had strong ties to this (mainly) Lutheran city and a majority of the villagers just went to Lutheran services in "foreign" Frankfurt territory. Also in the condominiums Philipp Ludwig II shared with Mainz he couldn't change anything — whether his subjects had become Lutheran during the reformation or had remained Roman Catholic.
  With his marriage in 1596 to Katharina Belgica, third daughter of William the Silent, he gained a personal connection to one of the leading personalities of Calvinism in Europe.
caption: Philipp Ludwig II
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