MAXIMILIAN II of Habsburg, EMPEROR. — Son of Ferdinand I, brother of Charles V, and of Anna Jagellon, born in Vienna in 1527. He spent many years of his youth at his uncle’s court, who between 1548 and 1550 gave him the government of Spain on behalf of his cousin Philip, and for a moment it seemed he might become king of Germany.
In Madrid he married in 1548 his cousin Maria, daughter of Charles V. Then he left Spain with a feeling of antipathy toward everything Spanish and toward his Spanish relatives. Though raised in such a rigidly Catholic environment, he soon developed strong sympathies for Lutheranism. His relations with his wife and father became difficult. Ferdinand for a moment decided to deprive his firstborn son of every right of succession. But Maximilian drew back from the idea of openly adhering to Lutheranism, considering that the Protestant princes would not support him: in 1562 he reached an agreement with his father, promising not to abandon the Catholic faith and to consent to sending his sons Rudolf and Matthias to the court of Philip II to be brought up as Catholics; for himself he reserved the right to follow his preferred religious opinions. Thus he was able to be crowned King of the Romans and in 1564 succeeded his father in the Austrian lands and the Empire. A cultured man with intellectual interests, he nevertheless had unclear ideas about the situation: at the Diet of Augsburg in 1566 he made proposals for a religious agreement between Catholics and Lutherans. Later he remained faithful to a policy of