Wetzlar Cathedral

Wetzlar Cathedral, which is not the seat of a bishop, was built from the 13th to the 15th century on a Romanesque church, but its construction remained unfinished. As the number of canons and vicars of the church declined throughout the 16th century, an agreement was reached in 1561 for the joint use of the church by the Catholic canons and the increasingly Lutheran inhabitants of Wetzlar. In the following years, however, there were repeated disputes: the canons prohibited Lutherans from entering the church. In return, the Protestant community occupied the nave in 1567. From 1571, the canons no longer celebrated mass in the choir of St. Mary's Church. Nevertheless, the church choir remained a Catholic institution upon the intervention of the Archbishop of Trier. At the end of the 16th century an agreement was finally reached.