Ferdinand I of Habsburg, Emperor

FERDINAND I OF HABSBURG, Emperor. - Son of the Archduke of Austria Philip II the Handsome and of Joanna the Mad, born in Alcalá (New Castile) on 10 March 1503, died in Vienna on 25 July 1564. In 1521 he received from his brother Charles V the Austrian hereditary lands, succeeding in restoring order in Tirol, Austria and Styria after the peasants' revolt. In '41 he had married Anna, sister of Louis II, King of Bohemia and Hungary. When his brother-in-law died at Mohács (1526), he claimed the succession in both kingdoms: he was recognized in Bohemia but not in Hungary, where the majority elected as king the voivode of Transylvania, John Szapolyai, supported by Suleiman II, who then besieged Vienna itself (1529). The Turkish danger and the Lutheran schism were the fundamental problems of Ferdinand's reign.

He presided in Germany over various diets, where he sought to reconcile Catholics and Protestants. In 1531 he was elected King of the Romans. In 1552 he concluded with the Protestants the Treaty of Passau, and, three years later, the religious peace of Augsburg, where among other things he attempted, with the "reservatum," to save the principal ecclesiastics. After the abdication of Charles V, on 14 March 1558 he was named emperor. When the Council of Trent was reopened in 1562 by Pius IV, Ferdinand, moved by the situation in Germany, presented a plan of reform of his own, in which he requested, among other things, the abolition of celibacy for priests and, for the laity, communion sub utraque specie. Personally attached to the Church, he was a tolerant, just, peaceable prince, well loved by his subjects, notwithstanding religious differences.

Angelo Ferrari