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King Rudolph I, also well known as Rudolph of Habsburg (German: Rudolf von Habsburg, Latin Rudolfus; May 1, 1218 – July 15, 1291) was a king of the Holy Roman Empire, who played a vital role in raising the Habsburg family to a leading position among the German feudal dynasties.
Life Rudolph was the son of Albert IV, Count of Habsburg, and Hedwig, daughter of Ulrich, Count of Kyburg, and was born in Limburg an der Lahn. At his father's death in 1239, Rudolph inherited the family estates in Alsace and Aargau. In 1245 he married Gertrude, daughter of Burkhard III, Count of Hohenberg. Thus Rudolf was a remarkable vassal in Swabia, the ancient Alemannic stem duchy. He paid frequent visits to the court of his godfather, the Emperor Frederick II, and his loyalty to Frederick and his son, Conrad IV of Germany, was richly rewarded by grants of land. In 1254 he was excommunicated by Pope Innocent IV as supporter of king Conrad. The disorder in Germany after the fall of the Hohenstaufen afforded an opportunity for Rudolph to increase his possessions. His wife was an heiress; and on the death of his childless maternal uncle, Hartmann VI, Count of Kyburg, in 1264, he seized his valuable estates. Successful feuds with the bishops of Strassburg and Basel further augmented his wealth and reputation, including rights over various tracts of land were purchased from abbots and others. He was also the possessor of large estates in the regions now known as Switzerland and Alsace as his father's inheritance. Rudolf managed to become the most powerful lord in the leaderless and ragged Swabia, though not its duke. These various sources of wealth and influence had rendered Rudolph the most powerful prince and noble in southwestern Germany (whose tribal duchy has fallen and left room for its own vassals to be quite independent) when, in the autumn of 1273, the princes met to elect a king after the death of Richard of Cornwall. His election in Frankfurt on 29 September 1273, when he was 55 years old, was largely due to the efforts of his brother-in-law, Frederick III of Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg. The support of Albert II, Duke of Saxony (Wittenberg) and of Louis II, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Duke of Upper Bavaria, had been purchased by betrothing them to two of Rudolph's daughters; so that Otakar II (1230-78), King of Bohemia, a candidate for the throne and grandson of Philip of Swabia, King of Germany (being the son of the eldest surviving daughter), was almost alone in his opposition. Another candidate was Frederick of Meissen (1257-1323), a young grandson of the excommunicated Emperor Frederick II having not yet a principality of his own as his father yet lived. Rudolph was crowned in Aachen on 24 October 1273. Friedrich Schiller in Der Graf von Habsburg ("The Count of Habsburg") presents a fictionalized rendering of the feast King Rudolf is known to have thrown following his coronation. To win the approbation of the Pope, Rudolph renounced all imperial rights in Rome, the papal territory and Sicily, and promised to lead a new crusade. Pope Gregory X, in spite of Otakar's protests, not only recognized Rudolph himself, but persuaded Alfonso X, King of Castile (another grandson of Philip of Swabia, the King of Romans) who had been chosen German king in 1257 in succession to William of Holland, to do the same. Thus, Rudolph surpassed the two heirs of the Hohenstaufen dynasty which he had earlier served so loyally. In November 1274 it was decided by the Diet of the Realm in Nuremberg that all crown estates seized since the death of the Emperor Frederick II must be restored, and that Otakar of Bohemia must answer to the Diet for not recognizing the new king. Otakar refused to appear or to restore the provinces of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola which he had seized in right of his first wife, a Babenberg heiress, having disputed over them aganst another Babenberg heir, Hermann VI, Margrave of Baden. Rudolf refuted Otakar's succession to Babenberg patrimony, declaring the provinces reverted to the crown due to lack of male-line heirs (which interpretation was against the provisions of Privilegium Minus). King Otakar was placed under the state ban; and in June 1276 war was declared against him. Having detached Henry I, Duke of Lower Bavaria, from his side, Rudolph compelled the Bohemian king to cede the four provinces in November 1276 to the control of the royal administration. Otakar was then invested with Bohemia by Rudolph, and his son Wenceslaus was betrothed to a daughter of the German king, who made a triumphal entry into Vienna. Otakar, however, raised questions about the execution of the treaty, made an alliance with some Polish chiefs and procured the support of several German princes, including his former ally, Henry of Lower Bavaria. To meet this combination, Rudolph entered into an alliance with Ladislaus IV, King of Hungary, and gave additional privileges to the citizens of Vienna. On 26 August 1278 the rival armies met on the banks of the River March in the Battle of Dürnkrut and Jedenspeigen where Otakar was defeated and killed. Moravia was subdued and its government entrusted to Rudolph's representatives, leaving Kunigunda, the Queen Regent of Bohemia in control of only the province surrounding Prague, while the young Wenceslaus was again betrothed to one of Rudolf's daughters. Rudolph's attention next turned to the possessions in Austria and the adjacent provinces, taken into royal domain. He spent several years in establishing his authority there but found some difficulty in making these provinces hereditary in his family. At length the hostility of the princes was overcome. In December 1282, Rudolph invested his sons, Albert and Rudolph, with the duchies of Austria and Styria in Augsburg, and so laid the foundation of the importance of the House of Habsburg. Additionally, he made the younger, the then twelve-year-old Rudolf, Duke of the defunct Duchy of Swabia, dukeless since Conradin's execution. The elder, the then 27-year-old Duke Albert (since 1274 married with a daughter of the Gorizian count of Tirol) was capable enough to hold some sway in the new patrimony. In 1286 king Rudolf fully invested the Duchy of Carinthia, one of the provinces conquered from Otakar. to an ally, Albert's father-in-law count Meinhard II of Tirol (1238-95). The princes of the realm did not allow Rudolf to give everything that was recovered to the royal domain to his own sons, and his allies needed their rewards too. Turning to the west, he compelled Philip, Count Palatine of Burgundy to cede some districts to him in 1281, forced the citizens of Bern to pay the tribute, which they had previously refused, and in 1289 marched against Philip's successor, Otto IV compelling him to do homage. In 1281 his first wife died. On 5 February 1284 he married Isabella, daughter of Hugh IV, Duke of Burgundy, his western neighbor. Rudolph was not very successful in restoring internal peace to Germany. Orders were indeed issued for the establishment of landpeaces in Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia, and afterwards for the whole of Germany. But the king lacked the power, resources, or the determination, to enforce them, although in December 1289 he led an expedition into Thuringia where he destroyed a number of robber-castles. In 1291 he attempted to secure the election of his son Albert as German king. However, the princes refused on the pretext of their inability to support two kings, perhaps because they feared the increasing power of the Habsburgs. Rudolph died in Speyer on July 15, 1291 and was buried in the Speyer Cathedral. He had a large family, but only one of his sons, Albert, afterwards the German king Albert I, survived him. Rudolph was a tall man with a pale face and a prominent nose. He possessed many excellent qualities such as bravery, piety and generosity. However, his reign is memorable rather in the history of the House of Habsburg than in that of the Kingdom of Germany, as his impact was largely limited to Southeastern and southwestern parts of the realm, all the princes of central and northern Germany, and any being left to their own devices. In the Divine Comedy, Dante finds Rudolph sitting outside the gates of Purgatory with his contemporaries who berate him as "he who neglected that which he ought to have done". Family and children He was married twice. First, in 1245, to Gertrude of Hohenberg and second, in 1284, to Agnes/Isabelle of Burgundy, daughter of Hugh IV, Duke of Burgundy and Beatrice of Champagne. All children were from the first marriage. King Rudolf also had an illegitimate son, Albrecht I of Schenkenberg, Count of Löwenstein. | ||||||||
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