Rudolf I

Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1273-1291)

• Born: May 1, 1218
• Birthplace: Limburg-im-Breisgau (now in Germany)
• Died: July 15, 1291
• Place of death: Speyer (now in Germany)

Rudolf, as the first of his family to achieve eminence, founded a dynasty that was to remain one of the most important royal families in Europe for more than six centuries.

Early Life

Until the age of fifty-five, when events were to raise him to the German throne as king of the Romans, Rudolf I was a relatively insignificant noble in northern Switzerland. His family originated in Alsace, near Mulhouse, and his lands included areas of Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland that lie in modern southern Germany, eastern France, and northwestern Switzerland. He oversaw these possessions from Habichtsburg (goshawk’s castle) in Aargau Canton. As was usual at the time, the family name was taken from the castle, and Habichtsburg came to be known as Habsburg. This area became so important to the Habsburgs as the site of their origin that Emperor Francis-Joseph I tried to buy it from the Swiss just before World War I. The Swiss refused, as they considered themselves well rid of the Habsburgs. In fact, Switzerland still celebrates its national holiday on August 1, which is the anniversary of the day in 1291 when news of the death of Rudolf I arrived.

Until his election, Rudolf had been quite active in disputes with the bishop of Basel and other quarrels within Switzerland. In 1254, he had been involved in a crusade against the Prussian Slavs and had gained a good reputation as a military leader. Although all this sounds impressive, he was actually rather unimportant in comparison with several other German nobles who controlled more land and were more powerful. He ranked only as a count in the feudal hierarchy.

Despite his comparatively low status, or rather because of it, he was elected to the throne in 1273. The reasons for this apparently extraordinary election are to be found in the conditions prevailing in Europe after the fall of the Hohenstaufen imperial dynasty in the middle of the thirteenth century. The trouble had begun with Emperor Frederick II. Although Frederick was a Hohenstaufen, his interests were in Sicily and Italy. In fact, he had never been to Germany before his election in 1212. His absence from Germany and his involvement in a feud with the Papacy over control of Italy meant that the German nobles were free to strengthen their own territories and establish their independence from imperial control. The situation continued to deteriorate under Frederick’s successors; between 1250 and 1272, there was a succession of weak emperors, some of whom never entered Germany. The German nobles believed that it was in their interest to perpetuate this situation because it afforded them opportunities to increase their personal power. They very willingly exchanged support for one imperial candidate or another in return for concessions, such as control of cities, the right to collect tolls, and grants of land.

It also appeared to be in the interest of various foreign powers to prevent the election of a strong emperor. The French, in particular, were interested in obtaining territory in Alsace, Lorraine, Burgundy, and other areas west of the Rhine River that were controlled by the emperor. The English were usually interested in opposing French ambitions, and the Papacy was interested in these struggles as well as in increasing its temporal power in Italy. Moreover, some popes were very eager to see a new crusade to the Holy Land. Opposing foreign powers championed candidates who would further their causes, and there were often two claimants, each of whom maintained that he had been elected. The results were minor wars and a state of near anarchy within Germany.

With the death of the latest nominal ruler, Richard of Cornwall, in 1272, Pope Gregory X determined that something had to be done to change the situation. He was primarily alarmed at the growing power of France. There had been suggestions from the French that the king of France should be made Holy Roman Emperor, since France was the most powerful country in Europe and could do most for the position. The Papacy was not interested in having an emperor who was too strong or too independent of the pope. With the territorial encroachments by France into Germany becoming increasingly bold, Gregory feared that France would soon be too powerful to resist. He therefore threatened the electors with a candidate of his own choice if they did not elect a suitable German noble. The German aristocracy did not want a strong emperor, so they turned to someone who posed little threat to their independence.

Life’s Work

Rudolf’s main ambition from the beginning of his reign in 1273 was to acquire as much land as possible for himself and to establish a hereditary monarchy for his descendants. He was always willing to sacrifice some abstract imperial right or some advantage in a distant part of the empire in return for recognition of the hereditary principle or for territorial additions to his own possessions.

His first task was to defeat the powerful nobles who questioned his election to the throne. Soon after he was elected, the Diet of Speyer gave him the authority to take back all the imperial lands that had been usurped by nobles during the previous twenty-five years. He was unable to carry out any general plans he might have had to confiscate such lands for his own use, because he was too dependent on the support of nobles who controlled them. The authorization did, however, give him an excuse to proceed against some of his most dangerous enemies.

The most important of these enemies was Otakar II, king of Bohemia. Otakar had not been allowed to vote in the election of Rudolf and had other grievances, but his real motive for rebellion was the desire to be elected emperor himself. Rudolf laid siege to Vienna in 1276 and quickly obtained the surrender of Otakar. As punishment, Otakar was dispossessed of many of his lands, including Austria. Vienna thus became the new seat of Rudolf and remained the Habsburg capital until the twentieth century. Otakar received assistance from some of his Slav dependents and resumed his opposition to Rudolf in 1278. He was killed after one of the ensuing battles, and the major threat to Rudolf ended. After the defeat of Otakar, Rudolf’s position was stronger, and he granted fewer exceptions to the prohibition against nobles retaining imperial lands.

The defeat of Otakar was the key event in establishing Rudolf’s credibility. He was not directly challenged afterward, although there were numerous threatening incidents in addition to the usual refusal of individual knights and nobles to recognize his authority. There were, for example, several impostors who claimed to be either Frederick I Barbarossa or Frederick II, despite the fact that both had been dead for many years. The legend persisted that one or the other of them was not dead, but merely sleeping, and would return in an hour of need. In 1285, Rudolf had one of the most significant of these impostors, Dietrich Holzschuh, burned at the stake. The impostors were a real threat, because they could become focal points for revolt. Rudolf’s execution of Holzschuh demonstrated that he was able to deal with such threats.

Rudolf’s power and prestige grew to such an extent that he was able to field a large and impressive army against Otto IV, Count Palatine of Franche-Comté. This rebel count had conspired with the king of France to gain independence from the empire. His scheme failed in 1289 with the arrival of the imperial army, and Rudolf was left firmly in control.

Although Rudolf had been elected and had shown that he could exercise power, he was never crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope. Gregory X promised to perform the ceremony on several occasions but died before he could carry out his promise. One of his successors, Pope Nicholas III , was less cooperative. The negotiations between him and Rudolf over this issue are an indication of how weak the empire had become and how far Rudolf was willing to go to secure the succession of his family. In return for the imperial crown, Rudolf was prepared to give up all the historic claims by previous emperors to territory in Italy. He also recognized the temporal superiority of the pope. These great concessions produced no results, as death intervened again. Nicholas died in 1280, before the negotiations were complete, and, in 1287, the death of Pope Honorius IV prevented the coronation. By the time arrangements had been made with the new pope, Nicholas IV , Rudolf himself was too ill to make the journey to Rome. When he died, he still had not received the imperial crown. Without recognition as emperor, he could not have his son crowned king of Rome during his own lifetime; thus, Rudolf could never ensure the royal succession of his family.

The second feature of Rudolf’s reign was his determination to increase his family’s territorial holdings and pass them on to his sons. Soon after taking the defeated Otakar’s lands, Rudolf made the acquisition permanent by naming his eldest son, Albert, duke of Austria and Styria. He attempted to extend his influence to the east by marrying the fourteen-year-old Isabella of Burgundy himself in 1284. Apparently, he hoped to carve out another duchy for his younger son, Rudolf, in Burgundy or Swabia. He also married his daughter to Wenceslaus II of Bohemia in a continuing effort to establish as many dynastic ties with important families as possible.

Clearly, the object of these maneuvers was to obtain recognition of his younger son as his successor to the throne. It appeared that he might succeed in that ambition, as a significant number of nobles agreed to recognize Rudolf’s son as legitimate successor if Rudolf were crowned Holy Roman Emperor. With the death of the younger Rudolf in 1289, at the age of twenty, these hopes were dashed. The elder Rudolf’s recent marriage had produced a third son, Johann, but he was still a baby, so the only remaining hope was his oldest son, Albert. In the eyes of most German nobles, Albert was too strong to be a safe king. His father had been too successful at acquiring territory for him. As usual, the German nobles preferred someone who was less of a threat to their independence.

By 1291, Rudolf’s health was so bad that he was unable to make the trip to Rome to receive the imperial crown from the hands of the pope. In any case, there seemed little point in such an exercise after the death of the younger Rudolf. He considered abdicating in favor of Albert, but he had first to obtain recognition of Albert as his successor from the nobles. To that end, he called a diet at Frankfurt-am-Main in May, 1291. As expected, the nobles were unwilling to recognize Albert, and Rudolf left the diet for Speyer, where he wanted to be buried alongside previous emperors. He died there on July 15.

Significance

Although Rudolf I was willing to trade privileges and concessions for recognition of his authority and for advantages to his family, he did maintain order throughout most of Germany and restore much of the lost prestige of the crown. He used force successfully when necessary, as shown by his campaigns against Otakar of Bohemia and Otto of Burgundy. The appearance of military prowess, his ability to deal with the complaints of cities and nobles, and his forceful suppression of insurrections gained a higher degree of respect for the throne than had existed for the past forty years.

Nevertheless, Rudolf was unable to accomplish any lasting constitutional changes that would alter the course of German history. The pattern of weak central authority and strong nobles that was to prevent the emergence of a German state on the model of France or England had been set. Without a hereditary monarch, those elected to the throne were mainly interested in gaining what they could for their families rather than strengthening the monarchy itself. In other words, in a feudal age when family meant everything, unless the monarchy could be seen as a family possession it would remain secondary in the policy of any king. Rudolf was no exception to this general pattern. He was able to restore something of the crown’s prestige, but his gains in power were traded away by his successors in return for support for their election.

Habsburg Monarchs

Reign

• Ruler

1273-1291

• Rudolf I

1298-1308

• Albert (Albrecht) I

1314-1325

• Frederick of Habsburg (co-regent)

1438-1439

• Albert II

1440/52-1493

• Frederick III

1493/08-1519

• Maximilian I

1519-1558

• Charles V (last to be crowned as Holy Roman Emperor)

1558-1564

• Ferdinand I

1564-1576

• Maximilian II

1576-1612

• Rudolf II

1612-1619

• Matthias

1619-1637

• Ferdinand II

1637-1657

• Ferdinand III

1658-1705

• Leopold I

1705-1711

• Joseph I

1711-1740

• Charles VI

1740-1742

• Interregnum

1742-1745

• Charles VII (Wittelsbach-Habsburg)

1745-1765

• Francis I (Lorraine)

1745-1780

• Maria Theresa (empress consort; queen of Hungary, 1740; empress dowager, 1765)

Bibliography

Barraclough, Geoffrey. The Origins of Modern Germany. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. This volume is probably the best English-language discussion of Rudolf in the context of his times.

Crankshaw, Edward. The Habsburgs: Portrait of a Dynasty. New York: Viking Press, 1971. A readily available, popularized account of the Habsburgs, from Rudolf to the twentieth century. Many illustrations, including contemporary pictures of Rudolf. With anecdotes about his military campaigns.

Eyck, Frank. Religion and Politics in German History: From the Beginnings to the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. An analysis of how Germanic peoples preserved links with classical civilization through their ability to assimilate other cultures and peoples, from their alliances with eighth century popes through the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The initial bond between the Germanic rulers and popes turned to conflict as the Papacy gained power. Tables, maps, bibliography, index.

Heer, Friedrich. The Holy Roman Empire. New York: Praeger, 1968. Translated from the German edition of 1967. Rudolf receives some attention in this account of the development of the Holy Roman Empire.

Jeep, John M., et al., eds. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2001. An A-Z encyclopedia that addresses all aspects of the German- and Dutch-speaking medieval world from 500 to 1500. Entries include individuals, events, and broad topics such as feudalism and pregnancy. Bibliographical references, index.

Moore, Robert Ian. The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. According to the publisher, “a radical reassessment of Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries [arguing that] the period witnessed the first true ’revolution’ in European society,” supported by transformation of the economy, family life, political power structures, and the rise of the non-Mediterranean cities. Bibliography, index.

Wilks, Michael J. The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later Middle Ages: The Papal Monarchy with Augustinus Triumphus and the Publicists. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963. This work provides a context for Rudolf, focusing on the relations between king and nobles.