Rudolf II

King of Hungary (r. 1572-1608), king of Bohemia (r. 1575-1611), and Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1576-1612)

• Born: July 18, 1552
• Birthplace: Vienna, Habsburg domain (now in Austria)
• Died: January 20, 1612
• Place of death: Prague, Bohemia (now in Czech Republic)

The eccentric, impolitic, and unstable Rudolf became one of the sixteenth century’s most renowned patrons of science and mannerist painting at his relocated imperial court in Prague.

Early Life

The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II was groomed for exalted rank from early childhood. He was reportedly cultured, erudite, and able to speak five languages besides his native German. Like his father, Maximilian II , Rudolf was well acquainted with Humanist literature and many of the still-respected Hermetic texts. A lengthy sojourn (1563-1571) at the Spanish court of his uncle, Philip II, endowed him with a broad understanding of world affairs and an enduring fascination for many things Spanish; for the rest of his life, Rudolf favored Spanish dress and frequently relied on advisers with Spanish experience or wives.

Rudolf wrote little, so historians rely on the accounts of others for limited insight into his personality. Even in his youth, the future emperor was described as melancholic and withdrawn. Rudolf’s aloofness generated an enduring fog of uncertainty; he was alternately depicted as engaging and distant, friendly and rancorous, judicious and intemperate, measured and mad. In light of his erratic behavior as emperor, it has been suggested that Rudolf may have suffered from schizophrenia, a heritable disease that plagued some near relations, including his illegitimate son Don Giulio. Several contemporary and later writers attributed the emperor’s increasingly intemperate behavior in his later years to syphilis, but the evidence for this thesis is tenuous. It is more likely that the frustrations of imperial rule merely exacerbated an already mistrustful and solitary disposition.

Life’s Work

To maintain the Austrian Habsburgs’ precarious hold on their imperial and other elective crowns, Rudolf was recalled from Madrid and crowned king of Hungary, of Bohemia, and of the Romans (the accepted prelude to coronation as Holy Roman Emperor) before his father’s death. On his imperial accession, Rudolf began to relocate his court to Prague; the move was completed by 1583.

Vienna’s vulnerability to Ottoman Turkish attack may have played a role in the emperor’s decision, but Prague also seemed a logical choice as capital. The extensive “lands of the Bohemian crown” were the richest of Rudolf’s domains, and Bohemia’s king was one of seven electors who would decide Germany’s next Holy Roman Emperor. By residing in the Hrad (or Hradschin, Prague’s castle complex) amongst a predominantly Czech population, the young emperor and king strengthened his family’s hereditary claim to the imperial title and seated himself firmly on the throne of a key territory.

The move to Prague also accorded well with Rudolf’s desire to be a cosmopolitan, and not merely Germanic, ruler. The Habsburg Empire of his day was not an integrated national state in any case; it included an almost bewildering array of inchoate nationalities, contending faiths, and neofeudal jurisdictions. Rudolf exercised his greatest authority in the Habsburgs’ German-speaking ancestral lands (the Erblande, which comprised most of modern Austria), Bohemia, and Hungary, but even in these core regions, he was constrained by a plethora of confessional, local, and noble privileges. Within Germany itself, deepening hostility among the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Roman Catholic minor rulers and between individual Protestant princes and the Catholic Habsburgs, diminished Rudolf’s already limited role as Holy Roman Emperor. Always reluctant to leave the artificial paradise of his castle, an increasingly frustrated Rudolf attended no meetings of the Reichstag (imperial legislature) after 1594.

Rudolf attempted to consolidate and legitimize his rule over a realm that lacked an economic, geographic, or national focus by emphasizing the majesty of the imperial ideal. To this end, Rudolf lavishly patronized learning and the arts at his court in Prague. He welcomed Humanist literati and numerous botanists, chemists, and astronomers. Johannes Kepler completed his work on celestial mechanics there; he and Tycho Brahe both held the title of imperial astronomer. Empiricism had not yet supplanted traditional modes of investigation, however, so the inquisitive Rudolf sponsored also many alchemists, astrologers, and devotees of the occult arts.

Like his father and many contemporary rulers, Rudolf developed a passion for collecting. Although few outsiders were privileged to view it, the emperor assembled possibly the greatest private art and antiquarian collections of the late Renaissance. Rudolf also became a leading patron of mannerist art. This post-Renaissance style, which emphasized allegorical themes and artistic virtuosity, attained striking levels of refinement at Rudolf’s court. The Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Dutch painter Bartholomaus Spranger were the emperor’s acknowledged favorites, but other noted protégés included the painters Hans von Aachen and Roelandt Savery, the Flemish illustrator Joris Hoefnagel, the Dutch sculptor Adriaen de Vries, and the goldsmith Hans Vermeyen, who produced Rudolf’s celebrated Bohemian crown.

Although the spectacular Rudolfine court sought to present an idealized, even utopian, vision of universal monarchy, Habsburg politics during the late sixteenth century were increasingly overshadowed by the realities of a divisive confessional crisis. To the dismay of successive papal nuncios, the nondogmatic Rudolf for many years gave only nominal support to the Counter-Reformation. The emperor paid lip service to the Tridentine decrees, but he never sanctioned introduction of the Inquisition into his territories. Despite Jesuit efforts among the aristocratic and educated, more than 90 percent of Bohemia’s inhabitants remained Protestant. Furthermore, the traditional Austrian, Bohemian, and Hungarian noble estates all contained powerful, potentially dominant Protestant factions.

Renewed warfare against the Ottoman Turks (1593-1606) temporarily enhanced the Habsburgs’ prestige as traditional defenders of all Christendom, yet military bungling and fiscal insolvency deprived Rudolf of any chance for a decisive victory. Widespread disillusion with an exhausting and inconclusive war eventually merged with dismay at Rudolf’s growing indecisiveness and reputed mental instability to precipitate a series of destabilizing crises during the last full decade of his reign.

Rudolf endured the most severe of several mental collapses in 1599-1600, during which he may have attempted suicide; other collapses occurred in 1578-1580 and 1606. Distrusting papal and rival Spanish Habsburg ambitions, Rudolf had relied for many years on moderate Catholic and Protestant advisers who shared his Humanist outlook and doctrinal indifference. Most of the emperor’s moderate Catholic confidants died during the 1590’s, however, and Rudolf cashiered his remaining Protestant counselors in 1599 for reasons that remain unclear. Rudolf subsequently depended on zealous Catholic courtiers who were determined to recover the empire for the Roman faith. Intemperate religious policies in Hungary soon provoked rebellion (1604-1606) by a once-loyal general, István Bocskay. Confronted by Bocskay, the Hungarian nobility, and his hated younger brother Matthias (Holy Roman Emperor, r. 1612-1619), the emperor was forced to accept a compromise settlement with the Turks (Peace of Zsitvatorok, 1606) and to grant concessions to Bocskay (henceforth, prince of Transylvania) and the Hungarian Protestants (Peace of Vienna, 1606).

The emperor’s defeat in Hungary precipitated his downfall. Seeking powerful allies against his elder brother, Matthias aligned himself with the Protestant-dominated estates of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. In 1608, Matthias secured election as king of Hungary by guaranteeing the Protestant nobility’s right to unhindered worship. The following year, in 1609, Rudolf was forced to grant a concessionary Letter of Majesty to the Protestant-controlled Bohemian estates in order to retain the electoral crown of that land. The embittered emperor then conspired with his cousin Leopold, bishop of Passau, to support the latter’s assault on Bohemia in 1610-1611. How Rudolf expected this bizarre adventure to restore his fortunes remains a mystery. The failure of the Passau invasion led to Rudolf’s deposal and confinement within the Hrad until his death.

Significance

Rudolf reigned during a transitional period in Central Europe’s political history. By the late sixteenth century, Habsburg pretensions in Germany were already weak. Although Habsburg authority in Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary was more tangible, its rulers had not yet developed the bureaucratic machinery needed to mobilize the resources of those lands. Rudolf was therefore insecure in his monarchical role and unable to exercise power consistently or effectively; the weakness of the emperor’s position may have contributed as much as his enigmatic personality to the eventual rash policies that undermined his reign. All Rudolf’s successors would confront these same fundamental problems of identity, purpose, and means during the following centuries; none decisively resolved them.

The emperor also stood at a crossroads in European cultural history. Rudolf embraced a waning Humanist ethos whose adherents still hoped to bring about an all-embracing artistic, intellectual, and moral synthesis. His court attracted the best artisans of this cosmopolitan spirit, providing a refuge from rising dogmatism in Germany and other European lands. Once Rudolf’s patronage was removed, however, this late flowering of the Renaissance faded quickly. Within a few short decades, both Humanism and mannerism were submerged by the vigorous Baroque world of the Counter-Reformation.

Bibliography

Evans, Robert John Weston. Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576-1612. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. The only English biography of Rudolf, which examines his worldview and provides vignettes of contemporary court and Bohemian notables. Includes illustrations and a bibliography.

Fichtner, Paula Sutter. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1490-1848: Attributes of Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. An institutional study that places Rudolf within the context of Habsburg and Central European history. Includes illustrations, maps, genealogical table, bibliography, and index.

Fučíková, Eliška, Lubomír Konecn , and Jaroslava Hausenblasová, eds. Rudolf II and Prague: The Court and the City. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997. Addresses Rudolfine architectural and artistic influences on Bohemia’s capital. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Discusses the development of mannerism under imperial patronage. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and index.