Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg

Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg. 1520

Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg. 1550

Joachim II Hector (German: Joachim II. Hector or Hektor; 13 January 1505 – 3 January 1571) was a Prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1535–1571). A member of the House of Hohenzollern, Joachim II was the son of Joachim I Nestor, Elector of Brandenburg and his wife, Elizabeth of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. He was nicknamed after Hector of Greek mythology.

Biography

Joachim II was born in Cölln. His first marriage was to Magdalena of Saxony, from the ducal Albertine line of the House of Wettin.

Joachim Nestor had made his sons sign an inheritance contract in which they promised to remain Roman Catholic; this was also in favour of Joachim Nestor's younger brother Archbishop-Elector Albert of Mainz, who had bought at enormous expenditures to the Holy See the episcopal sees of Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Mainz.

Joachim Nestor, who had co-financed this accumulation of offices, agreed to charge the Catholic believers in his electorate for the recovery of the expenditures and incurred credits with Jacob Fugger by way of selling them indulgences.^[1] So the retrieval of the investment, and fulfillment of the credit contracts with Fugger, depended on the sale of indulgences to Catholic believers in Brandenburg. Had Joachim Hector not signed this pact, he would likely have been passed over in the line of inheritance.

After the death of Magdalena in 1534, Joachim Hector married Hedwig of Poland, daughter of Sigismund I the Old of Poland-Lithuania, in 1535. As the Jagiellon dynasty was Catholic, Joachim II promised Sigismund he would not make Hedwig change her denomination.

A reformed Joachim II receives the Eucharist in both forms, the Bread and the Cup, in St.Nicholas' Church in Spandau.

On the diet of princes of imperial immediacy (Fürstentag) of the Holy Roman Empire in Frankfurt upon Main in early 1539 the Lutheran Philipp Melanchthon unveiled to the gathered princes, among them Joachim Hector, that the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1510 in the March of Brandenburg had been Judicial murder based on a feigned host desecration. The also attending Josel von Rosheim then pleaded Joachim Hector in a separate conversation to reallow Jews to settle in the March, from which they had been banned since the pogroms. Following both encounters Joachim Hector first allowed Jews to settle again in the March on 25 June 1539.^[2] On 1 November the same year then, he for the first time received the Eucharist in both forms in Spandau's St. Nicholas' Church. This date is regarded the official begin of Protestant Reformation in the March of Brandenburg. In fact, however, Joachim Hector took no action to openly adopt Lutheranism until 1555, in order not enter into an open confrontation with the emperor.

In 1542 Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria, was fighting against the Ottomans in Buda. Joachim commanded a great Christian army (Austrian, Hungarian, German, Bohemian, Italian and Dalmatian forces), but the Elector was not a seasoned warlord and beat a retreat from Buda.^[3]

In 1545 Joachim II held a gala double wedding celebration for his two children, John George and Barbara. They were married to Sophie and George, both children of the Silesian Piasta Duke of Liegnitz, Frederick II.

Long drawn to the Lutheran faith and always seeking balance between Protestant and Roman Catholic factions, Joachim II did not officially profess the Lutheran Creed until 1555, after the deaths of Joachim Nestor (1535) and Sigismund I (1548).

In 1569 Joachim Hector gained his brother-in-law King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland, after the then usual financial expenditures, to enfeoff the prince-elector and his issue to inherit Ducal Prussia in case of extinction of the Prussian Hohenzollern line.

Joachim Hector died in Köpenick in the Palace there, which he made been built in 1558.

References

1. ^ In the neighbouring Electorate of Saxony Elector John Frederick I (Ernestine line of Wettin) forbade the sale of indulgences, not because he generally disagreed with the idea of indulgences, but because his candidate for the see of Mainz had been overbidden by the Hohenzollern. However, his subject Martin Luther later gained him to also reject the idea of indulgences.
2. ^ Eugen Wolbe, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin und in der Mark Brandenburg, Berlin: Kedem, 1937, p. 64.
3. ^ History of Hungary 1526–1686, Zsigmond Pach and Ágnes R. Várkonyi (eds.), Budapest: Akadémia Publisher, 1985. ISBN 963 05 0929 6

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Joachim II Hector, Elector of Brandenburg

• Joachim Hector co-inherits Ducal Prussia

Ancestors

External links

• Portrait of Magdalena of Saxony. {See [1]}