page_title: Jörg Jenatsch
section_title: Protestant leader
hierarchical_section_title: Jörg Jenatsch / Protestant leader
caption_attribution_description: {de:Schloss Rietberg: Ansicht von Nordwesten
context_page_description: Jörg Jenatsch, also called Jürg or Georg Jenatsch, was a Swiss political leader during the Thirty Years' War, one of the most striking figures in the troubled history of the Grisons in the 17th century.
context_section_description: He was probably born in Lohn, or Samedan in the Upper Engadine. His childhood was spent in Silvaplana, before studying theology at Zürich and Basel, and in 1617 he became the Protestant pastor of Scharans (near Thusis) on the Protestant-Catholic border. Almost at once he plunged into active politics, taking the side of the Venetian and Protestant party associated primarily with the Salis family in the region, against the pro-Spanish Habsburgs and Catholic policy supported by the rival faction, headed by members of the Planta family.
  He became one of the board of Protestant 'clerical overseers' and a leader of the anti-Spanish faction.  In 1618 he supervised the torture to death of the arch-priest Nicola Rusca of Sondrio. The popular court in Thusis associated with the overseers also outlawed many leading men from the Spanish faction, notably Rudolf von Planta and his brother Pompeius von Planta. A subsequent popular court in the region's capital, Chur, rejected the Thusis verdicts, and the Republic of the Grisons slid towards anarchy in what became known as the Bündner Wirren or the Confusion of Graubünden. In 1620, an uprising coordinated with the Spanish governor in Milan resulted in the massacre of a number of Protestants in the Republic's subject territory in the Valtellina, a  fertile valley of considerable strategic importance (for through it the Spaniards in Milan could communicate by the Umbrail Pass and the Stelvio Pass with the Austrians in Tirol). From 1620 to 1639, control over the Valtellina became a bone of contention among Spain, Venice and France, with the Republic of the Grisons unable to reassert its control.
caption: Rietberg Castle, home of Pompeius Planta
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