During the Thirty Years' War the Hildesheim Prince-bishop Ferdinand of Bavaria, backed by the Catholic League and his Wittelsbach relatives, took the occasion to regain the lost territories. Referring to the 1629 Edict of Restitution issued by Emperor Ferdinand II, he had the nuns expelled and put the abbey under Jesuit rule. Nevertheless, in 1632 the Catholic canons again had to abscond from the approaching Swedish army and Wöltingerode, though it finally fell back to the Hildesheim Bishopric in 1643, remained Lutheran until the 1803 secularisation.