Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor

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Rudolf II
Imperator Romanorum
Portrait by Hans von Aachen, c. 1607
Holy Roman Emperor (more...)
Reign	12 October 1576 – 20 January 1612 (35 years, 100 days)
Proclamation	1 November 1576, Regensburg
Predecessor	Maximilian II
Successor	Matthias
Born	18 July 1552 Vienna, Archduchy of Austria, Holy Roman Empire
Died	20 January 1612(1612-01-20) (aged 59) Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire
Burial	St. Vitus Cathedral
Issue more...	Don Julius Caesar d'Austria (ill.)
House	Habsburg
Father	Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor
Mother	Maria of Austria
Religion	Catholic Church
Signature

Rudolf II (18 July 1552 – 20 January 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the House of Habsburg.

Rudolf's legacy has traditionally been viewed in three ways:^[1] an ineffectual ruler whose mistakes led directly to the Thirty Years' War; a great and influential patron of Northern Mannerist art; and an intellectual devotee of occult arts and learning which helped seed what would be called the Scientific Revolution. Determined to unify Christendom, he initiated the Long Turkish War (1593–1606) with the Ottoman Empire. Exhausted by war, his citizens in Hungary revolted in the Bocskai Uprising, which led to more authority given to his brother Matthias. Under his reign, there was a policy of toleration towards Judaism.

Rudolf was born in Vienna on 18 July 1552.^[2] He was the eldest son and successor of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, and King of Hungary and Croatia; his mother was the Spanish Princess Maria, a daughter of Charles V^[2] and Isabella of Portugal. He was the elder brother of Matthias who was to succeed him as King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor.

Rudolf spent eight formative years, from age 11 to 19 (1563–1571), in Spain, at the court of his maternal uncle Philip II, together with his younger brother Ernest, future governor of the Low Countries.^[3]

After his return to Vienna, his father was concerned about Rudolf's aloof and stiff manner, typical of the more conservative Spanish court, rather than the more relaxed and open Austrian court; but his Spanish mother saw in him courtliness and refinement.^[4] In the years following his return to Vienna, Rudolf was crowned King of Hungary (1572), King of Bohemia and King of the Romans (1575)^[5] when his father was still alive.

For the rest of his life, Rudolf would remain reserved, secretive, and largely a recluse who did not like to travel or even partake in the daily affairs of the state.^[4]

He was more intrigued by occult learning such as astrology and alchemy, which was mainstream in the Renaissance period, and had a wide variety of personal hobbies such as horses, clocks, collecting rarities, and being a patron of the arts. He suffered from periodic bouts of "melancholy" (depression), which was common in the Habsburg line. These became worse with age and were manifested by a withdrawal from the world and its affairs into his private interests.

Like Elizabeth I of England, whose birth was 19 years before his, Rudolf dangled himself as a prize in a string of diplomatic negotiations for marriages but never in fact married. Rudolf was known to have had a succession of affairs with women, some of whom claimed to have been impregnated by him.^[4] He had several illegitimate children by his mistress Catherina Strada. Their eldest son, Don Julius Caesar d'Austria, was likely born between 1584 and 1586 and received an education and opportunities for political and social prominence from his father.^[6] Another famous child was Caroline (1591–1662), Princess of Cantecroix, mother-in-law of Beatrice de Cusance, later Duchess of Lorraine as the second wife of Charles IV of Lorraine.

During his periods of self-imposed isolation, Rudolf reportedly had affairs with his Obersthofmeister, Wolfgang Siegmund Rumpf vom Wullroß (1536–1606), and a series of valets. One of them, Philipp Lang von Langenfels (1560–1609), influenced him for years and was hated by those seeking favours with the emperor.^[7][8]

Rudolf succeeded his father, Maximilian II, on 12 October 1576.^[5] In 1583, he moved the court to Prague.^[9]

In 1607, Rudolf sent Julius to live at Český Krumlov, in Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic, a castle that Rudolf had purchased from Peter Vok of Rosenberg, the last member of the House of Rosenberg, who had fallen into financial ruin. Julius lived at Český Krumlov in 1608, when he reportedly abused and murdered the daughter of a local barber, who had been living in the castle, and then disfigured her body. Rudolf condemned his son's act and suggested that he should be imprisoned for the rest of his life.^[6]

However, Julius died in 1609 after he had shown signs of schizophrenia, refused to bathe and lived in squalor. His death was apparently caused by an ulcer that ruptured.^[6]

Many artworks commissioned by Rudolf are unusually erotic.^[10] The emperor was the subject of a whispering campaign by his enemies in his family and the Catholic Church in the years before he was deposed. Sexual allegations may well have formed a part of the campaign against him.^[11]

Historians have traditionally blamed Rudolf's preoccupation with the arts, occult sciences, and other personal interests for the political disasters of his reign.^[1] More recently historians have re-evaluated that view and see his patronage of the arts and occult sciences as a triumph and key part of the Renaissance, and his political failures are seen as a legitimate attempt to create a unified Christian empire that was undermined by the realities of religious, political and intellectual disintegrations of the time.^[1]

Although raised in his uncle's Catholic court in Spain, Rudolf was tolerant of Protestantism and other religions including Judaism.^[4] The tolerant policy by the empire towards the Jews would see Jewish cultural life flourishing, and their population increased under Rudolf's reign.^[12]

He largely withdrew from Catholic observances and even in death refused the last sacramental rites. He had little attachment to Protestants either, except as a counter-weight to papal policies. He put his primary support behind conciliarists, irenicists and humanists. When the papacy instigated the Counter-Reformation by using agents sent to his court, Rudolf backed those who he thought were the most neutral in the debate, were not taking a side or trying to effect restraint. That led to political chaos and threatened to provoke civil war.^[1]

His conflict with the Ottoman Empire was the final cause of his undoing. Unwilling to compromise with the Ottomans and stubbornly determined that he could unify all of Christendom with a new crusade, he started a long and indecisive war against the Ottomans in 1593.^[13] The war lasted until 1606 and is known as the "Long Turkish War".^[1]

By 1604, his Hungarian subjects were exhausted by the war and revolted, led by Stephen Bocskai (Bocskai uprising). In 1605, Rudolf was forced by his other family members to cede control of Hungarian affairs to his younger brother Archduke Matthias. By 1606, Matthias had forged a difficult peace with the Hungarian rebels (Peace of Vienna) and the Ottomans (Peace of Zsitvatorok).

Rudolf was angry with Matthias's concessions and saw them as giving away too much to further his hold on power. That made Rudolf prepare to start a new war against the Ottomans, but Matthias rallied support from the disaffected Hungarians and forced Rudolf to cede the crowns of Hungary, Austria and Moravia to him. Meanwhile, the Bohemian Protestants demanded greater religious liberty, which Rudolf granted in the Letter of Majesty in 1609. Bohemians continued to press for further freedoms, and Rudolf used his army to repress them.^[14]

Bohemian Protestants then appealed to Matthias for help. His army held Rudolf prisoner in his castle in Prague until 1611, when Rudolf ceded the crown of Bohemia, as well, to his brother.^{[citation needed]}

Rudolf died in 1612, nine months after he had been stripped of all effective power by his younger brother, except the empty title of Holy Roman Emperor, to which Matthias was elected five months later. In May 1618 with the event known as the Defenestration of Prague, the Protestant Bohemians, in defence of the rights granted them in the Letter of Majesty, threw imperial officials out of the window and thus the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) started.^[15]

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Rudolf moved the Habsburg capital from Vienna to Prague in 1583. Rudolf loved collecting paintings and was often reported to sit and stare in rapture at a new work for hours on end.^[4] He spared no expense in acquiring great past masterworks, such as those of Dürer and Brueghel. He was also patron to some of the best contemporary artists, who mainly produced new works in the Northern Mannerist style, such as Bartholomeus Spranger, Hans von Aachen, Giambologna, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Aegidius Sadeler, Roelant Savery, Joris Hoefnagel and Adrian de Vries, as well as commissioning works from Italians like Paolo Veronese.

Rudolf's collections were the most impressive in the Europe of his day and the greatest collection of Northern Mannerist art ever to be assembled.^[1] The adjective Rudolfine, as in "Rudolfine Mannerism" is often used in art history to describe the style of the art that he patronised.

His love of collecting went far beyond paintings and sculptures. He commissioned decorative objects of all kinds and in particular mechanical moving devices. Ceremonial swords and musical instruments, clocks, waterworks, astrolabes, compasses, telescopes and other scientific instruments were all produced for him by some of the best craftsmen in Europe.

He patronized natural philosophers such as the botanist Charles de l'Ecluse, and the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler both attended his court. Tycho, who had spent much of his life making observations of stars and planets that were more accurate than any previous observations, directed Kepler to work on the planet Mars. In doing so, Kepler found that in order to fit the observations to the required accuracy, it was necessary to assume that each planet orbits the sun in an ellipse with the sun at one focus, sweeping out equal areas in equal times. Thus were born two of Kepler's laws of planetary motion. It was Rudolf's patronage of the two astronomers that made this possible, as Kepler recognized when he eventually published the Rudolphine Tables. As mentioned earlier, Rudolf also attracted some of the best scientific instrument makers of the time, such as Jost Bürgi, Erasmus Habermel and Hans Christoph Schissler. They had direct contact with the court astronomers and through the financial support of the court were economically independent to develop scientific instruments and manufacturing techniques.^[16]

The poet Elizabeth Jane Weston, a writer of Renaissance Latin poetry, was also part of his court and wrote numerous odes to him.

Rudolf kept a menagerie of exotic animals, botanical gardens, and Europe's most extensive "cabinet of curiosities"^[4] (Kunstkammer) incorporating "the three kingdoms of nature and the works of man". It was housed at Prague Castle, where between 1587 and 1605 he built the northern wing to house his growing collections.^[17] A lion and a tiger were allowed to roam the castle, as is documented by the account books, which record compensation paid to survivors of attacks or to family members of victims.^[18]

Rudolf was even alleged by one person to have owned the Voynich manuscript, a codex whose author and purpose, as well as the language and script and posited cipher remain unidentified to this day. According to hearsay passed on in a letter written by Johannes Marcus Marci in 1665, Rudolf was said to have acquired the manuscript at some unspecified time for 600 gold ducats. No evidence in support of this single piece of hearsay has ever been discovered. The Codex Gigas was also in his possessions.

As was typical of the time, Rudolf II had a portrait painted in the studio of the renowned Alonso Sánchez Coello. Completed in 1567, the portrait depicted Rudolf II at the age of 15. This painting can be seen at the Lobkowicz Palace in the Rozmberk room.

By 1597, the collection occupied three rooms of the incomplete northern wing. When building was completed in 1605, the collection was moved to the dedicated Kunstkammer. Naturalia (minerals and gemstones) were arranged in a 37-cabinet display that had three vaulted chambers in front, each about 5.5 m wide by 3 m high and 60 m long, connected to a main chamber 33 m long. Large uncut gemstones were held in strong boxes.^[19]

Apart from the fantastic nature of the objects, it is also the aesthetics of their arrangement and presentation which attracts the visitor's attention. Without, however, there being a desire for purely scientific systematization on the part of the sovereign, it is necessary to detect the harmonious expression of the order of God and discern in the micro-macrocosm the analogy of a mimetic dependence on human arts towards nature and the world. ^[20]

Rudolf's Kunstkammer was not a typical "cabinet of curiosities", a haphazard collection of unrelated specimens. Rather, the Rudolfine Kunstkammer was systematically arranged in an encyclopaedic fashion. In addition, Rudolf employed his court gemologist and physician Anselmus Boetius de Boodt (1550–1632),^[21] to curate the collection. Anselmus was an avid mineral collector and travelled widely on collecting trips to the mining regions of Germany, Bohemia and Silesia, often accompanied by his Bohemian naturalist friend, Thaddaeus Hagecius. Between 1607 and 1611, Anselmus catalogued the Kunstkammer and in 1609 published Gemmarum et Lapidum, the finest gemological treatise and encyclopedia ever written for this time.^[19]

As was customary at the time, the collection was private, but friends of the emperor, artists and professional scholars were allowed to study it. The collection became an invaluable research tool during the flowering of 17th-century European philosophy.

Rudolf's successors did not appreciate the collection, and the Kunstkammer gradually fell into disarray. Some 50 years after its establishment, most of the collection was packed into wooden crates and moved to Vienna. The collection remaining at Prague was looted during the last year of the Thirty Years' War by Swedish troops who sacked Prague Castle on 26 July 1648 and took the best of the paintings, many of which later passed to the Orléans Collection after the death of Christina of Sweden. In 1782, the remainder of the collection was sold piecemeal to private parties by Joseph II. One of the surviving items from the Kunstkammer is a "fine chair" that was looted by the Swedes in 1648 and now owned by the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle in England,^[22] and others survive in museums.^[23][24]

Astrology and alchemy were regarded as mainstream scientific fields in Renaissance Prague, and Rudolf was a firm devotee of both. His lifelong quest was to find the philosopher's stone, and Rudolf spared no expense in bringing Europe's best alchemists to court, such as Edward Kelley and John Dee. Rudolf even performed his own experiments in a private alchemy laboratory.^[4] When Rudolf was a prince, Nostradamus prepared a horoscope, which was dedicated to him as 'Prince and King'. In the 1590s, Michael Sendivogius was active at Rudolph's court.^[25]

Rudolf gave Prague a mystical reputation that persists in part to this day, with Alchemists' Alley l, on the grounds of Prague Castle, being a popular visiting place and tourist attraction.

Rudolf was a patron of the occult sciences. That and his practice of tolerance towards Jews caused during his reign the legend of the Golem of Prague to be established.^[12]

Rudolf had a relationship with the Royal mistress Kateřina Stradová (also known as Anna Marie Stradová, or Catherina Strada, c. 1568-1629), with whom he had six children:

• Don Julius Caesar d'Austria
• Matyáš d'Austria
• Carlos d'Austria
• Karolina d'Austria
• Dorothea d'Austria
• Alžběta d'Austria

v t e House of Habsburg[n 1]
Original line Albert Count of Habsburg c. 1188–1239 Rudolf I of Germany c. 1218–1291 Albert I of Germany 1255–1308 Hartmann 1263–1281 Rudolf II Duke of Austria 1270–1290 Rudolf I of Bohemia 1281–1307 Frederick the Fair c. 1289–1330 Leopold I Duke of Austria 1290–1326 Albert II Duke of Austria 1298–1358 Henry the Friendly 1299–1327 Otto Duke of Austria 1301–1339 John Parricida c. 1290–1312/1313   Albertinian line   Leopoldian line Rudolf IV Duke of Austria 1339–1365 Frederick III 1347–1362 Albert III Duke of Austria 1349–1395 Leopold III Duke of Austria 1351–1386 Frederick II Duke of Austria 1327–1344 Leopold II Duke of Austria 1328–1344 Albert IV Duke of Austria 1377–1404 William Duke of Austria c. 1370–1406 Leopold IV Duke of Austria 1371–1411 Ernest Duke of Austria 1377–1424 Frederick IV Duke of Austria 1382–1439 Albert II of Germany 1397–1439 Frederick III HRE 1415–1493 Albert VI Archduke of Austria 1418–1463 Sigismund Archduke of Austria 1427–1496 Ladislaus the Posthumous 1440–1457 Maximilian I HRE 1459–1519 Philip I of Castile 1478–1506   Spanish / Iberian line   Austrian / HRE line Charles V HRE 1500–1558 Ferdinand I HRE 1503–1564 Philip II of Spain 1527–1598 Maximilian II HRE 1527–1576 Ferdinand II Archduke of Austria 1529–1595 Charles II Archduke of Austria 1540–1590 Carlos Prince of Asturias 1545–1568 Philip III of Spain 1578–1621 Rudolf II HRE 1552–1612 Ernest of Austria 1553–1595 Matthias HRE 1557–1619 Maximilian III Archduke of Austria 1558–1618 Albert VII Archduke of Austria 1559–1621 Wenceslaus Archduke of Austria 1561–1578 Andrew Margrave of Burgau 1558–1600 Charles Margrave of Burgau 1560–1618 Ferdinand II HRE 1578–1637 Maximilian Ernest of Austria 1583–1616 Leopold V Archduke of Austria 1586–1632 Charles of Austria 1590–1624 Philip IV of Spain 1605–1665 Charles of Austria 1607–1632 Ferdinand of Austria 1609–1641 John-Charles of Austria 1605–1619 Ferdinand III HRE 1608–1657 Leopold Wilhelm of Austria 1614–1662 Ferdinand Charles Archduke of Austria 1628–1662 Sigismund Francis Archduke of Austria 1630–1665 Balthasar Charles Prince of Asturias 1629–1646 Charles II of Spain 1661–1700 Ferdinand IV King of the Romans 1633–1654 Leopold I HRE 1640–1705 Charles Joseph of Austria 1649–1664 Joseph I HRE 1678–1711 Charles VI HRE 1685–1740
Notes: ^ "Habsburg family tree". Habsburg family website. 28 October 2023. Retrieved 28 October 2023.

• History of Austria
• Kings of Germany family tree; he was related to every other king of Germany
• Moldavian Magnate Wars for the background on southern wars (with Ottoman Turkey and its allies)
• Vespasiano I Gonzaga, a friend of Rudolf who built a Renaissance "Ideal city" in Sabbioneta, Italy
• Mineral collecting – Rudolf II was the 16th century's most famous mineral collector; his collections were curated by Anselmus Boetius de Boodt

• Bolton, Henry Carrington (1904). The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II, 1576–1612, Milwaukee: Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Co., 1904. From Internet Archive Inaccurate and misleading
• Evans, R. J. W. (1973). Rudolf II and his world: A study in intellectual history, 1576–1612. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed, 1984. Considered the fundamental re-evaluation of Rudolf.
• Rowse, A. L. (1977). Homosexuals in History: Ambivalence in Society, Literature and the Arts. MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN 0-02-605620-8
• Howard Hotson. "Rudolf II", in Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul Grendler. Vol. 5. ISBN 0-684-80514-6
• Marshall, Peter (2006). The Magic Circle of Rudolf II: Alchemy and Astrology in Renaissance Prague. ISBN 0-8027-1551-6. Also published as The Theatre of the World: Alchemy, Astrology and Magic in Renaissance Prague (in the UK, ISBN 0-436-20521-1; in Canada, ISBN 0-7710-5690-7); and in paperback as The Mercurial Emperor: The Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaissance Prague (2007) ISBN 978-1-84413-537-0. Biography, focusing on the many artists and scientists Rudolf patronized.
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh; Princes and Artists, Patronage and Ideology at Four Habsburg Courts 1517–1633, Thames & Hudson, London, 1976, ISBN 0-500-23232-6

• Rudolf II, from Encyclopædia Britannica, latest edition online, full-article.
• Rudolf II and Prague, 1997 official exhibition.
• Prague during the reign of Rudolf II, by Jacob Wisse, in Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.
• Rudolf II Archived 6 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine, by Edward Einhorn, tells the story of the latter part of Rudolf II's life.
• Literature by and about Rudolf II in the German National Library catalogue
• Works by and about Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library)
• Publications by or about Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor at VD 17
• Entry about Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor in the database Gedächtnis des Landes on the history of the state of Lower Austria (Lower Austria Museum)
• Rudolf II, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Peter Forshaw, Howard Hotson & Adam Mosley (In Our Time, Jan. 31, 2008)

Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor House of Habsburg Born: 18 July 1552 Died: 20 January 1612
Regnal titles
Preceded by Maximilian II	King of Bohemia 1576–1611	Succeeded by Matthias
	King of Hungary and Croatia Archduke of Austria Margrave of Moravia 1576–1608
	King in Germany 1575–1612
	Holy Roman Emperor 1576–1612
Preceded by Jacob VII	Prince of Piombino 1603–1611	Succeeded by Isabella