Julius Pflug came from a Saxon noble family, studied at Leipzig and in Italy, and served Duke George as counselor while holding canonries at Meissen and Naumburg. He belonged to the humanist party that wished to reform the church without dividing it, accompanied the duke to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, and took part in the Colloquy of Regensburg in 1541.

That year the chapter of Naumburg elected him bishop. The Elector John Frederick of Saxony would not accept a Catholic, and in January 1542 Luther himself consecrated Nicholas von Amsdorf in his place, the first evangelical bishop in Germany. Pflug waited in exile until the emperor’s victory at Mühlberg in 1547 put him in possession of his see.¹

In 1548 Pflug’s own proposals for reform became the basis of the Augsburg Interim, which he revised with Michael Helding, auxiliary bishop of Mainz, the court preacher Johann Agricola, and two Spanish theologians. It was the settlement that Charles V imposed on the Protestant lands until a council could meet. It allowed married clergy and the cup to the laity but restored the mass, the seven sacraments, and the authority of the bishops. Lutheran pastors who refused it were driven out by the hundreds, and the resistance it provoked at Magdeburg helped undo the emperor’s victory.

Pflug attended the Council of Trent briefly in 1551 and continued to work for a settlement until his death at Zeitz on September 3, 1564. He was the last Catholic bishop of Naumburg.

Michael Helding (1506–1561), Pflug’s fellow author of the Interim, later became Bishop of Merseburg. He is not given a separate page here.

Catholic Opponents