This list of propositions criticized the practice of selling indulgences, remissions of the punishment meted out for sin in Purgatory.
Luther's criticism snowballed into a massive schism in the church, and from there into a split among the states of the empire.
On August 26 and 27, 1619, the Protestant estates of Kingdom of Bohemia deposed the Catholic king Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor and invited the Lutheran elector Palatine, Frederick V, to take his place.
The revolt ignited a broader religious war across Germany, the Thirty Years' War, which would involve not only the states of the empire but also Sweden, the Dutch Republic, France, Denmark–Norway, England, Scotland, Spain and Hungary and which would kill some eight million people before its end.
To avoid a tie, his son, Ferdinand IV, king of Bohemia and the presumptive favorite, agreed to abstain.