1. The year 1624
For the 18th-century Protestant jurisprudents [1]; [2] who defined the two Latin terms annus normalis and annus decretorius there just one “normative year,” the year 1624, the date of record for determining the confessional status in the Holy Roman Empire defined in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). Whether various 16th-century legal provisions of the Empire can be interpreted as introducing an annus normalis[7. 39] is dubious, since it was these ver…