Maximilian I

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Maximilian I (1459-1519), Holy Roman emperor from 1493 to 1519, began the restoration of the power of the Hapsburgs. His intense interest in the arts and in public display earned him a place in legend as well as history.

Although he was never crowned by the Pope, Maximilian became king of Germany in 1486 and emperor-elect in 1493, and he won papal approval as emperor in 1508. His talent, however, lay less in his success as emperor than in his securing the imperial title for the Hapsburg house and ensuring Hapsburg predominance in European diplomacy for the next 4 centuries. The empire had become by the end of the 15th century rather an aid to dynastic ambition than an effective form of government for Germany. Maximilian I's career was more an example of manipulating the advantages afforded by the imperial title than an actual rule of the fragmented empire. He was a better knight than he was a general, and he appears to have been far more a storybook king than a hardworking 15th-century monarch. He spent a great deal of time and money perpetuating his own memory, both in works and pictures about himself and in several romantic versions of his own life which he wrote.

Maximilian's marriage to Mary of Burgundy in 1477 plunged him into a conflict with the king of France, Louis XI, over the Burgundian territories. Holding his own against Louis, Maximilian also had to put down revolts in Flanders. His son and heir, Philip of Burgundy, was born in 1478, and his wife died in 1482. Maximilian held his Burgundian dominions, and in 1496 married Philip to Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, thus linking the Hapsburg house to the most vigorous dynasty of Europe. In 1500 the future emperor Charles V was born to Juana and Philip, and by a series of dynastic accidents Charles became the heir not only of Maximilian's Hapsburg territories and claim to the imperial title but to Burgundy and Spain as well, thus laying the foundations for the power of the Spanish monarchy for the next century.

Maximilian's success in the dynastic marriage market was greater than his military and diplomatic success. He failed to defeat France on an abortive expedition to Italy in 1496 and was himself defeated by the Swiss in 1499 and outmaneuvered in Italy by Louis XII of France in 1500. Between 1500 and 1504 Maximilian was busy putting down rebellions in Germany, and after the death of his son Philip in 1506 the problems of the Netherlands regency were added to those of Germany and Italy. In 1508 Maximilian's expedition to Italy was stopped by Venetian resistance, and the Emperor retaliated by entering into the League of Cambrai with France and the papacy against Venice. In 1510, however, Pope Julius II reversed his policy and rejected the league, and from 1510 until his death Maximilian was faced with the rising power of France in Italy.

Besides external political threats, Maximilian faced the perennial administrative chaos of Germany and accomplished a number of governmental and judicial reforms, including the establishment of the Imperial Court in 1495, in which Roman law was to be used. Maximilian also urged reform of the Church, particularly in Germany. At his death in 1519 the crises which would trouble the 16th century were already evident: the rivalry between Spain and France, the use of Italy and the papacy as a battleground for the conflict, and the stirrings of anticlericalism and the questioning of ecclesiastical dogma which would usher in the Reformation. Maximilian's reputation as the "last knight" was a fitting one.

Further Reading

The most thorough work in English on Maximilian is the somewhat romanticized biography by Christopher Hare (pseudonym for Mrs. Marian Andrews), Maximilian the Dreamer (1913). An older biography is by Robert W. Seton-Watson, Maximilian I (1901). Since Maximilian's reputation is so varied, the reader should also consult Glenn E. Waas, The Legendary Character of Kaiser Maximilian (1941), which provides both a good bibliography and a survey of Maximilian's legend. Useful background works are The Cambridge Medieval History, edited by J. B. Bury and others (8 vols., 1913-1936), and The New Cambridge Modern History (14 vols., 1957-1970).

Additional Sources

Benecke, Gerhard, Maximilian I (1459-1519): an analytical biography, London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Maximilian I (Holy Roman Empire) (1459–1519; ruled 1493–1519), Holy Roman emperor. Maximilian I was a member of the Habsburg Dynasty. Elected king of Romans in 1486, he declared himself elected Holy Roman emperor in 1508. In 1477 Maximilian married Mary, Duchess of Burgundy (1457–1482). In 1490 he married Anne, Duchess of Brittany (1477–1514), by proxy, but that marriage was annulled in 1491. In 1494 he married Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510). He had three legitimate children, including Philip the Fair (1478–1506), duke of Burgundy and king of Castile (ruled 1506), and Margaret (1480–1530), regent of the Netherlands. Maximilian also had at least eleven acknowledged illegitimate children.

Possibly named after the third-century martyr Saint Maximilian of Celeia, Maximilian was the son of Holy Roman emperor Frederick III (ruled 1440–1493) of the House of Habsburg and Empress Eleonor (1436–1467) of the Portuguese royal house of Avis, who were married in Rome in 1452 by Pope Nicholas V (reigned 1447–1455). Maximilian was born on 22 March 1459 in his parents' residence city of Wiener Neustadt in Lower Austria, and he and his mother are buried there. His life was tied to building the power and reputation of his family through shrewd marriage alliances for himself, his children, and his grandchildren and through various artistic projects and sponsorships, including an important relationship with the artist Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). When Maximilian died on 12 January 1519 in the archducal castle located along the walls of the Upper Austrian city of Wels, his family had claims over territories stretching across Europe and overseas into the Americas.

Maximilian is often referred to as "the Last Knight" and has been seen as a transitional figure on the cusp of early modern history. His constant lack of money did not deter him from imagining magnificent schemes, many relating to projecting an image of himself and his rule to posterity. The most famous examples of these undertakings are the elaborate funerary monuments he planned for himself in the court chapel at Innsbruck. These monuments reveal a combination of imagined ties among his dynasty, medieval antecedents, and classical Rome (inspired by humanist interests in antiquity). His court has been seen as an important mediator for the spread of Italianate forms and ideas across the Alps into the rest of the Holy Roman Empire, particularly after his marriage in 1494 to one of the richest heiresses of his day, Bianca Maria Sforza, from Milan.

In the history of the Habsburg Dynasty, Maximilian built on his father's acquisition of the imperial crown, which remained in Habsburg hands with one brief exception until they declared the end of the empire in 1806. Maximilian's marriage to the heiress of the great late-medieval Burgundian inheritance, Mary, brought those rich lands under the control of the Habsburgs. While he was unsuccessful in his campaigns against the Swiss towns and cantons that wrested control of parts of the Habsburg patrimony from the dynasty, Maximilian is credited with engineering the marriage in 1496 of his son Philip to the Spanish heiress Joan I (queen of Castile 1504–1555; queen of Aragón 1516–1555). This marriage more than made up for the Swiss losses through the gain of the Iberian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon together with their overseas possessions in Italy, the western Mediterranean, and the Americas.

After the death in 1490 of Matthias I Corvinus (ruled 1458–1490), king of Hungary, who had taken the city of Vienna and made it his residence, Maximilian turned his attentions back from the west of Europe to the Habsburgs' hereditary Danubian holdings and the enticing kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary. He captured Vienna and again employed marriage negotiations, this time with representatives of the important ruling dynasty of those kingdoms, the Jagiellonians (who also controlled Poland). Through a double marriage of Jagiellonians and Habsburgs negotiated in Vienna in 1515, Maximilian set up the situation in which his grandson Ferdinand I (ruled 1558–1564) claimed the Bohemian and Hungarian thrones after the death of the Jagiellonian king Louis II (ruled 1516–1526) on the battlefield at Mohács, fighting the Ottoman army, in 1526.

In the constitutional history of the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian is known for the role he played in the reorganization of institutions beginning in the 1490s. This reorganization has been interpreted variously by historians of the empire, but it established a more active imperial judiciary and regional governing mechanisms, among other modifications.

When Maximilian died in the castle at Wels, he left to his Burgundian-raised grandson (who as Emperor Charles V ruled 1519–1556), an array of claims, titles, challenges, and opportunities vastly different from those he had inherited. The Habsburgs were well on their way to world significance.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Burgkmair, Hans. The Triumph of Maximilian I: 137 Woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair and Others. Edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum. New York, 1964.

Freydal: Des Kaisers Maximilian I: Turniere und Mummereien (Freydal: The tournaments and costumes of Emperor Maximilian I). Edited by Franz, Graf Folliot de Crenneville. 2 vols. Vienna, 1880–1882. Attributed to Maximilian.

Kaiser Maximilians Theuerdank. 2 vols. Facsimile. Plochingen, 1968. Attributed to Maximilian; originally published 1517.

Maximilian I, Holy Roman emperor. Kaiser Maximilians I Weisskunig. Edited by H. T. Musper. 2 vols. Stuttgart, 1956.

Secondary Sources

Benecke, Gerhard. Maximilian I (1459–1519): An Analytical Biography. Boston, 1982.

Scholz-Williams, Gerhild. The Literary World of Maximilian I: An Annotated Bibliography. Sixteenth Century Bibliography, vol. 21. St. Louis, 1982.

Wiesflecker, Hermann. Kaiser Maximilian I: Das Reich, Österreich und Europa an der Wende zur Neuzeit (Emperor Maximilian I: The empire, Austria, and Europe on the eve of modernity). 5 vols. Munich, 1971–1986. The standard biography.

—JOSEPH F. PATROUCH