RODOLPH I of Hapsburg, King of GERMANY. — Born on 1 May 1218, count of Habsburg in the Argovia and of Kyburg (near Zurich) and lord of a large part of Upper Alsace, he was the most powerful prince of the ancient Duchy of Swabia, which had not been reconstituted after the death of the last Hohenstaufen; a man of great enterprise and magnanimity, skilled in arms and fortunate in battle, much esteemed by the Alemanni and the Italians (Giovanni Villani, *Cron.*, VII, 55).
He was fortunate enough to succeed in restoring the Kingdom of Germany. Died the pretender Richard of Cornwall (1886) — Paris, Musée Rodin.
of Cornwall (2 Apr. 1272), Alfonso of Castile, his rival, demanded that Gregory X should recognize his rights and forbid a new election. But the Pope replied that his rights were still in dispute and that the opinion of the electors, which was known to be opposed, must be heard; for his part Charles of Anjou favoured his nephew Philip III, king of France, for the throne of Germany. The electors began to be concerned about the new election in the summer of 1272; and at the beginning of 1273 Werner of Eppenstein, archbishop of Mainz, set to work to reconcile the ecclesiastical and lay princes, and then Frederick, burgrave of Nuremberg, supported the cause of R., his friend. He was in fact elected on 1 Oct. 1273 at Frankfort and was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 24th. Gregory X, to whom R. had communicated his election, officially recognized him as king on 20 Sept. 1274 after summoning Alfonso and Ottokar II of Bohemia to acknowledge him; then he met him at Lausanne in Oct. 1275 and accepted his oath to help in recovering the possessions of the Church from Radicofani to Ceprano, the Exarchate, the Pentapolis, Ancona, Spoleto, Bertinoro and its neighbourhood, the Matilda lands and the rights over Sicily: in short, all that Louis the Pious and Otto I had sworn to defend. Besides this, R. received the Cross from the hands of the Pope for the defence of the Holy Land, with the promise of imperial coronation. But R. did not come into Italy despite his repeated promises, being concerned to secure his power in Germany together with that of his family (cf. Dante, *Purg.*, VI, 97 ff.; VII, 91-96). In this he met with the opposition especially of Ottokar II, king of Bohemia. The latter had succeeded in extending his dominion over the south-eastern duchies, approaching as far as the borders of Friuli; in June 1276 R. waged war on him, besieged Vienna and with the help of Mainard of Tirol and Albert of Gorizia occupied Austria, Stiria, Carinthia, forcing Ottokar to do him homage in Nov. When in 1278 Ottokar broke the agreements, R. again waged war on him, defeated and killed him (26 Aug.) and invaded Bohemia and Moravia; then in 1281 he assigned Austria and Stiria to his son Albert and in 1286 Carinthia to Mainard.
R., however, did not intend to renounce his rights over Italy, where Charles of Anjou, king of Naples, exercised a strong preponderance, and in particular over Rome as senator and over Tuscany as vicar. Pope Gregory endeavoured to bring about an understanding between the two, whereby Charles received the imperial investiture for Provence and Forcalquier and R. gave in marriage to Charles, his daughter Clemence, in 1280. R. was more reserved in ceding to the Pope the Romagna, where his vicars continued to exercise power, and it was only in 1278 that Nicholas III (v.) succeeded in placing there his rector, who was Bertoldo Orsini, after having enforced the observance of what had been promised on many occasions. In return R. managed to claim for himself the vicariates of Tuscany and Lombardy.
R. met with open opposition in the Diet of Frankfort in May 1291 from the German princes when he wished to designate his son Albert as king of Germany; thence he went to Spires, where he died on 15 July 1291.