Maximilian II of Habsburg, Emperor

MAXIMILIAN II OF HABSBURG, Emperor. - Son of Ferdinand I, brother of Charles V, and of Anna Jagiellon, b. in Vienna in 1527. He spent many years of his youth at the court of his uncle, who gave him the government of Spain between 1548 and 1550 on behalf of his cousin Philip, and for a moment he seemed destined to become King of Germany.

In Madrid he married his cousin Maria, daughter of Charles V, in 1548. Then he left Spain with a feeling of antipathy toward everything Spanish and toward his Spanish relatives. Although he had grown up in such a rigidly Catholic environment, he discovered quite early in himself lively sympathies for Lutheranism. His relations with his consort and with his father became difficult. Ferdinand for a moment decided to strip his firstborn of every right of succession. But M. drew back from the thought of an open adherence to Lutheranism out of the consideration that the Protestant princes would not have given him support: in 1562 he came to an agreement with his father, to whom he promised that he would not abandon the Catholic faith and that he would consent to send his sons Rudolf and Matthias to the court of Philip II to be educated there as Catholics; for himself he reserved the right to follow the religious opinions he preferred. Thus he was able to be crowned King of the Romans, and in 1564 he succeeded his father in the Austrian states and in the Empire. A cultured man, with intellectual interests, he nevertheless had rather unclear ideas about the situation: at the Diet of Augsburg of 1566 he made proposals for a religious agreement between Catholics and Lutherans. Subsequently he remained faithful to a policy of tolerance, granting freedom of worship, but he ended by displeasing the Catholics who wanted reaction and the Protestants who accused him of ambiguity. He died in 1576 after having refused the Sacraments of the Roman Church.

Francesco Cognasso