Marriages of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor

Tags

Anne of Brittany, Archduke of Austria, Bianca Maria Sforza, Emperor Maximilian I, House of Habsburg, Mary of Burgundy, Philip I of Castile, Philip of Burgundy, Pope Alexander VI, Pope Julius II, Royal Marriage

Emperor Maximilian was married three times, but only the first marriage produced offspring.

Maximilian I (March 22, 1459 — January 12, 1519) was King of the Romans from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death. He was never crowned by the Pope, as the journey to Rome was blocked by the Venetians. He proclaimed himself elected emperor in 1508 (Pope Julius II later recognized this) at Trent, thus breaking the long tradition of requiring a papal coronation for the adoption of the Imperial title. Maximilian was the only surviving son of Friedrich III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Infanta Eleanor of Portugal. Since his coronation as King of the Romans in 1486, he ran a double government, (with a separate court), with his father until Friedrich III’s death in 1493.

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor

Maximilian’s first wife was Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482).

Mary (February 13, 1457 – March 27, 1482), nicknamed the Rich, was a member of the House of Valois-Burgundy who ruled a collection of states that included the duchies of Limburg, Brabant, Luxembourg, the counties of Namur, Holland, Hainaut and other territories, from 1477 until her death in 1482.

As the only child of Charles I the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and his wife Isabella of Bourbon, a daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon and Agnes of Burgundy, Mary inherited the Burgundian lands at the age of 19 upon the death of her father in the Battle of Nancy on January 5, 1477. In order to counter the appetite of the French king Louis XI for her lands, she married Archduke Maximilian of Austria.

They were married in Ghent on August 19, 1477, and the marriage was ended by Mary’s death in a riding accident in 1482. Mary was the love of his life. Even in old age, the mere mention of her name moved him to tears (although, his sexual life, contrary to his chivalric ideals, was unchaste).

Mary of Burgundy

The grand literary projects commissioned and composed in large part by Maximilian many years after her death were in part tributes to their love, especially Theuerdank, in which the hero saved the damsel in distress like he had saved her inheritance in real life.

Beyond her beauty, the inheritance and the glory she brought, Mary corresponded to Maximilian’s ideal of a woman: the spirited grand “Dame” who could stand next to him as sovereigns. To their daughter Margaret, he described Mary: from her eyes shone the power (Kraft) that surpassed any other woman.

The marriage produced three children:

1. Philipp of Burgundy (1478–1506) who inherited his mother’s domains following her death, but predeceased his father. He married Joanna of Castile, becoming king-consort of Castile upon her accession in 1504, ruled Castile via the concept Jure uxoris (a Latin phrase meaning “by right of (his) wife”) and is known as King Felipe I of Castile. He and was the father of the Holy Roman Emperors Charles V and Ferdinand I.

The meeting of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy

2. Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), who was first engaged at the age of 2 to the French dauphin (who became Charles VIII of France a year later) to confirm peace between France and Burgundy. She was sent back to her father in 1492 after Charles repudiated their betrothal to marry Anne of Brittany. She was then married to the crown prince of Castile and Aragon Juan, Prince of Asturias, and after his death to Philibert II of Savoy, after which she undertook the guardianship of her deceased brother Philipp’s children, and governed Burgundy for the heir, Charles.

3. Francis of Austria, who died shortly after his birth in 1481.

Maximilian’s second wife was Anne of Brittany (1477–1514) the eldest child of Duke Francis II of Brittany and his second wife Margaret of Foix, Infanta of Navarre.

Anne of Brittany

They were married by proxy in Rennes on December 18, 1490, but the contract was dissolved by Pope Alexander VI in early 1492, by which time Anne had already been forced by the French king, Charles VIII (the fiancé of Maximilian’s daughter Margaret of Austria) to repudiate the contract and marry him instead.

The drive behind this marriage, to the great annoyance of Maximilian’s father, Emperor Friedrich III (who characterized it as “disgraceful”), was the desire of personal revenge against the French (Maximilian blamed France for the great tragedies of his life up to and including Mary of Burgundy’s death, political upheavals that followed, troubles in the relationship with his son and later, Philipp’s death ).

Maximilian, as the young King of the Romans, had in mind a pincer grip against the Kingdom of France, while Friedrich III wanted him to focus on expansion towards the East and maintenance of stability in newly reacquired Austria. But Brittany was so weak that it could not resist French advance by itself even briefly like the Burgundian State had done, while Maximilian could not even personally come to Brittany to consummate the marriage.

Maximilian’s third wife was Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510). She was the eldest legitimate daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan by his second wife, Bona of Savoy, daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy and Anne de Lusignan of Cyprus.

Bianca Maria Sforza

They were married in 1493, the marriage bringing Maximilian a rich dowry and allowing him to assert his rights as imperial overlord of Milan. The marriage was unhappy, and they had no children. In Maximilian’s view, while Bianca might surpass his first wife Mary in physical beauty, she was just a “child” with “a mediocre mind”, who could neither make decisions nor be presented as a respectable lady to the society.

Benecke opines that this seems unfair, as while Bianca was always concerned with trivial, private matters (Recent research though indicates that Bianca was an educated woman who was politically active), she was never given the chance to develop politically, unlike the other women in Maximilian’s family including Margaret of Austria or Catherine of Saxony.

Despite her unsuitability as an empress, Maximilian tends to be criticized for treating her with coldness and neglect, which after 1500 only became worse. Bianca, on the other hand, loved the emperor deeply and always tried to win his heart with heartfelt letters, expensive jewels and allusions to sickness, but did not even get back a letter, developed eating disorders and mental illness, and died a childless woman.

Joseph Grünpeck, the court historian and physician, criticized the emperor, who, in Grünpeck’s opinion, was responsible for Bianca’s death through neglect.

In addition, he had several illegitimate children, but the number and identities of those are a matter of great debate. Johann Jakob Fugger writes in Ehrenspiegel (Mirror of Honour) that the emperor began fathering illegitimate children after becoming a widower, and there were eight children in total, four boys and four girls.

March 22, 1459: Birth of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. Part II.

Tags

Anne of Brittany, Archduke of Austria, Bianca Maria Sforza, Holy Roman Emperor, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, Holy Roman Empire, King Carlos I of Spain, Philip the Handsome

As the Treaty of Senlis had resolved French differences with the Holy Roman Empire, King Louis XII of France had secured borders in the north and turned his attention to Italy, where he made claims for the Duchy of Milan. In 1499/1500 he conquered it and drove the Sforza regent Lodovico il Moro into exile.

After his wife’s Duchess Mary of Burgundy’s death (1482) Maximilian was forced to allow the States General (representative assembly) of the Netherlands to act as regent for his infant son Archduke Philipp but, having defeated the States General in war, he reacquired control of the regency in 1485. Through marriage of his son Philipp the Handsome to eventual queen Joanna of Castile in 1498, Maximilian helped to establish the Habsburg dynasty in Spain, which allowed his grandson Charles to hold the thrones of both Castile and Aragon.

Maximilian’s second marriage was to Anne of Brittany (1477–1514) — they were married by proxy in Rennes on December 18, 1490, but the contract was dissolved by Pope Innocent VIII in early 1492, by which time Anne had already been forced by the French King, Charles VIII (the fiancé of Maximilian’s daughter Margaret of Austria) to repudiate the contract and marry him instead.

This breech of contract brought France into conflict with Maximilian. On March 16, 1494 Maximilian married Bianca Maria Sforza, a daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, by his second wife, Bona of Savoy. However, despite supporting the Duke of Milan Maximilian was unable to hinder the French from taking over Milan. The subsequent prolonged Italian Wars resulted in Maximilian joining the Holy League to counter the French. In 1513, with Henry VIII of England, Maximilian won an important victory at the battle of the Spurs against the French, stopping their advance in northern France. His campaigns in Italy were not as successful, and his progress there was quickly checked.

The situation in Italy was not the only problem Maximilian had at the time. The Swiss won a decisive victory against the Empire in the Battle of Dornach on July 22, 1499. Maximilian had no choice but to agree to a peace treaty signed on September 22, 1499 in Basel that granted the Swiss Confederacy independence from the Holy Roman Empire.

Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan

In 1496, Maximilian issued a decree which expelled all Jews from Styria and Wiener Neustadt. Similarly, in 1509 he passed the “Imperial Confiscation Mandate” which ordered the destruction of all Jewish literature apart from the Bible.

Within the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian faced pressure from local rulers who believed that the King’s continued wars with the French to increase the power of his own house were not in their best interests. There was also a consensus that deep reforms were needed to preserve the unity of the Empire. The reforms, which had been delayed for a long time, were launched in the 1495 Reichstag at Worms. A new organ was introduced, the Reichskammergericht, that was to be largely independent from the Emperor. The new organ proved itself politically weak and its power returned to Maximilian in 1502.

Due to the difficult external and internal situation he faced, Maximilian also felt it necessary to introduce reforms in the historic territories of the House of Habsburg in order to finance his army. Using Burgundian institutions as a model, he attempted to create a unified state. This was not very successful, but one of the lasting results was the creation of three different subdivisions of the Austrian lands: Lower Austria, Upper Austria, and Vorderösterreich.

Years later, in order to reduce the growing pressures on the Empire brought about by treaties between the rulers of France, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and Russia, as well as to secure Bohemia and Hungary for the Habsburgs, Maximilian met with the Jagiellonian kings Ladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia and Sigismund I of Poland at the First Congress of Vienna in 1515. There they arranged for Maximilian’s granddaughter Mary to marry Louis, the son of Ladislaus, and for Anne (the sister of Louis) to marry Maximilian’s grandson Ferdinand (both grandchildren being the children of Philip the Handsome, Maximilian’s son, and Joanna of Castile). The marriages arranged there brought Habsburg kingship over Hungary and Bohemia in 1526. Both Anne and Louis were adopted by Maximilian following the death of Ladislaus.

Thus Maximilian through his own marriages and those of his descendants (attempted unsuccessfully and successfully alike) sought, as was current practice for dynastic states at the time, to extend his sphere of influence. The marriages he arranged for both of his children more successfully fulfilled the specific goal of thwarting French interests, and after the turn of the sixteenth century, his matchmaking focused on his grandchildren, for whom he looked away from France towards the east. These political marriages were summed up in the following Latin elegiac couplet: Bella gerant aliī, tū fēlix Austria nūbe/ Nam quae Mars aliīs, dat tibi regna Venus. Translated: “Let others wage war, but thou, O happy Austria, marry; for those kingdoms which Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee.”

Maximilian’s policies in Italy had been unsuccessful, and after 1517 Venice reconquered the last pieces of their territory. Maximilian began to focus entirely on the question of his succession. His goal was to secure the throne for a member of his house and prevent Francis I of France from gaining the throne.

In 1501, Maximilian fell from his horse and badly injured his leg, causing him pain for the rest of his life. Some historians have suggested that Maximilian was “morbidly” depressed: from 1514, he travelled everywhere with his coffin.

Maximilian died in Wels, Upper Austria, on January 12, 1519 at the age of 59. The death of Maximilian seemed to put the succession at risk. However, The Fugger family provided Maximilian a credit of one million gulden, which was used to bribe the prince-electors. However, the bribery claims have been challenged. At first, this policy seemed successful, and Maximilian managed to secure the votes from Mainz, Cologne, Brandenburg and Bohemia for his grandson Charles.

Maximilian’s son, Philipp the Handsome (King Felipe I of Castile by right of his wife) had died in 1506. The resulting “election campaign” was unprecedented due to the massive use of bribery. Within a few months the election of his grandson as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was secured. Charles had also succeeded his maternal grandfather, King Fernando II-V of Aragon and Castile in 1516 and became King Carlos I of a united Spain. With his election as Emperor, Charles V ruled an empire as vast and as powerful as that of Charlemagne ‘s centuries earlier.

Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor
Charles I as King of Spain
Charles I as Archduke of Austria
Charles II as Duke of Burgundy