ABSTRACT
PACK CONSPIRACY. This event takes its name from a minor Saxon government official, Otto von Pack, who used a forged document in 1528 to confide to Landgrave Philip of Hesse (q.v.) that the Catholic territories had concluded an offensive military alliance against the evangelicals. Philip, who fully believed Pack because the notion of an imminent Catholic attack agreed with his own assessment of the political situation, sought to rally the evangelical estates and cities to a preventive war against the Catholics. When the forgery was recognized as such, and tempers cooled down, a great deal of mistrust had arisen between the Catholic and the Lutheran (q.v.) rulers.
