Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 204 – Rudolf IV, the Founder and Forger, which is also episode 2 of Season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

In a niche to the left of the main altar in the Stephansdom, the great cathedral in the center of Vienna, somewhat hidden by later decorations stands a cenotaph. On its cover you see two figures lying side by side, each nearly two meters long and wearing splendid clothes, their feet resting on two lions. The figures are wearing what looks like crowns, a band surmounted by 12 spikes. A royal couple no doubt.

There is an inscription surrounding them, but you will be unable to read it. It is written in a script I have never seen before, the Alphabetum Kaldeorum. This script, it is said, comes from the ancient Chaldeans, a peoples living in Babylon in biblical times.

We know what it says on the cenotaph, because there is a conversion table from this script into Latin script held in the state library in Munich. The mystery revealed we can now read the text, which merely says: “This is the grave of duke Rudolf the Founder” .

Who was this man who wrote his name and title in a secret script onto his funeral monument, a script, most people believe he had created himself, and who called himself “the founder”, a name he is still known to us today. What is he the founder of? Why is he wearing a crown when he was only a duke? How come he is one of the most important early Habsburg, yet reigned for merely 7 years?

This is a story of myths and mysteries, of tangible political objectives, elaborate forgeries, a tale that features letters by Julius Caesar and Nero that reveal an unexpected fondness for this land on the edge of the empire. Ah, and Hercules’ son is also making an appearance – in Austria.

Seriously, this is what we are looking at in this episode.

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And with that, back to the show

Last week we ended with the birth of Rudolf, the eldest son of duke Albrecht the Wise of Austria, on All Saints day 1339. This event that brought enormous relief not only to his parents, but to all the people in the land. When he saw the light of day for the first time, the legendary fecundity of the Habsburg family had hit a bad snag. His father did have five brothers, but all of them and all of their sons had died. If Rudolfs mother, at the time already 39 years old, and his father suffering cruelly from rheumatoid arthritis, had not by some miracle conceived him and then three more sons, the Habsburgs would have ended as a footnote in European history, rather than as a whole library. And the lands of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola would have been torn part in a war of succession, as much of Europe would be when such a snag happened again in 1701 and 1740.

But this time, it didn’t. Rudolf lived and so did his younger brothers Albrecht and Leopold. And what was almost as miraculous was that his father Albrecht the Wise survived until Rudolph was 19 and hence able to take over the political leadership of his duchy.

During the 14th century the Habsburgs pursued two main territorial objectives. The first was to either acquire or at least contain their neighbours, the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary. Acquisition had been the objective in the earlier parts of the century when the original dynasties of these lands, the Premyslids and Arpads had died out. Rudolph’s grandfather, king Albrecht I had made a bid for both, but had his hopes cut short when he was cut short by his nephew.

By the time of Rudolf’s birth, acquisition was no longer an option. Bohemia had gone to the great rivals of the Habsburgs, the counts of Luxemburg, and it was now ruled by one of Europe’s most famous chivalric knights, John, the Blind King of Bohemia, whilst Hungary had gone to the Angevins from Naples whose astute policies and growing wealth would make them the most powerful rulers in Central europe. Therefore containment was the dominant policy. Keeping friendly relations to avoid invasion was the order of the day in Vienna.

With the east sealed off, their main focus turned west. Like all other princely families, the Habsburgs had long realised that the only way to achieve supremacy in the empire required them to hold a large and contiguous territory where they could move soldiers and gold from one end to the other without having to cross someone else’s land. In 1339, when Rudolf was born, the Habsburgs were a long way away from that objective.

Their ancestral lands in the triangle between Basel, Strasburg and Freiburg lies 700 km west of Vienna. In between these two territories lay the duchy of Carinthia, the county of Tyrol, the archbishopric of Salzburg, the county of Feldkirch, the abbey of St. Gallen, the bishopric of Constance and the cities in what is now German speaking Switzerland. All of these had to be brought under Habsburg control if they were to create that contiguous territory stretching all along the Northern side of the Alps.

Carinthia and Tyrol were the first on the shopping list. And the Habsburgs were lucky in as much that Henry, duke of Carinthia and count of Tyrol was on his last leg. All he was leaving behind was a daughter, Margarete. But then the Habsburgs were also unlucky, because Margarete had been married to Johann-Heinrich of Moravia, the son of king John of Bohemia from the House of Luxemburg.

At this time there were three families fighting for supremacy in the empire, the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs who controlled Bavaria and the Palatinate and the Luxemburgers who were kings of Bohemia and counts of Luxemburg. Each of these powers were roughly equal in size. Like in any three body system, politics were extremely fragile. Each side had to balance their desire to add territory against the risk that the other two would gang up on you if you became too greedy.

The inheritance of Henry of Carinthia was the matter that would push this system out of kilter.

As far as law and custom was concerned, Carinthia and Tyrol were to go to Henry’s daughter Margarete and her husband Johann-Heinrich of Luxemburg. But if that happened, Austria would be completely surrounded by its rivals. The Luxemburgs in Bohemia and Carinthia, the Wittelsbachs on their western border and the Hungarians in their back. That was obviously hugely concerning for Albrecht the Wise, but also to the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian. King John of Bohemia had already made some major gains in Silesia and in his homelands on the western border of the empire, so the precarious power balance was already a bit lopsided. Adding Carinthia and Tyrol would seriously upset the apple cart.

So Ludwig and Albrecht made a deal. The Habsburgs were to receive Carinthia, Carniola and the southern part of Tyrol, whilst Ludwig would get the northern part of Tyrol. Margarete and her husband would be shoved out of the way.

And that is exactly what they did, or tried to do. In 1335, Henry of Carinthia had just died, the emperor Ludwig the Bavarian declared Carinthia and Tyrol vacant fiefs and awarded them to Albrecht and his brother Otto. Margarete, JoIhann-Heinrich and the rest of the Luxemburger clan were flabbergasted by such blatant thievery. A war was now inevitable. The only problem was that king John was back in Paris recovering from a serious injury that would ultimately turn him blind and his son Karl did not have an army at hand.

So it was left to Margarete and her husband to defend her inheritance. Tyrol straddles both sides of the Alps and is a country of deep valleys, ravines and craggy summits, of castles built into the sides of soaring mountains, a place a comparatively small but determined force could easily defend against even large invading armies. The teenagers, helped by the local lords, took advantage of the topography and sent the Habsburgs packing. Carinthia was harder to defend and less loyal, so it became part of Austria, which it still is.

Margarete and Johann-Heinrich were deeply irritated over the loss of Carinthia and lobbied John of Bohemia to take Carinthia back by force. John who never backed out of a fight invaded Austria. The campaign was a roaring success and the Habsburg army fled. But then John of Bohemia just returned home, not making the slightest effort to take back Carinthia.

The next year the Habsburgs attacked Bohemia and John, most unusually, ceded the battlefield. And then everyone went home.

Having been robbed of Carinthia and Carniola and watching her husband’s family standing by without really helping her, made her, as an Englishmen would say, a bit miffed. But then rumours began circulating that the Luxemburgs were prepared to cede the Tyrol to the Habsburgs for some gains elsewhere, Margarete knew the game was up, unless she did something. And so she did something unprecedented, she threw her husband out. Just like that.

She went to emperor Ludwig the Bavarian to protect her against the inevitable retaliation from the Luxemburgs and a potential invasion by the Habsburgs. Ludwig too was keen on the Tyrol, who wouldn’t be. It is gorgeous.

There were a few problems though. Margarete’s marriage to Johann-Heinrich was valid as far as the church was concerned. And incessant philandering, squeezing one’s wife’s land’s dry and paranoid killing of political opponents weren’t recognised reasons for divorce. Only consanguinity or failure to consume were. The chances that the pope would grant a divorce to help an excommunicated emperor who had just made sure the pope had no more say in imperial elections, was pretty much 0.0000000%.

But Ludwig the Bavarian was an emperor. And as emperor he granted her a civil divorce, the first civil divorce in European history since the Romans. That set Margarete free to marry the son of Ludwig, another Ludwig.

This was not only a massive scandal, but also caused a major shift in imperial politics. As far as the Habsburgs were concerned, working with Ludwig the Bavarians was no longer of any value. Ludwig had stepped on their toes in Tyrol and hard.

Albrecht changed his allegiance and sought to get closer to the Luxemburgs. And that is why Rudolf, aged five, was put in play to marry Catherine, the daughter of the Karl of Luxemburg, the future king of Bohemia.

Which in turn was the first step in a series of events that would lead to the downfall of emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and the rise Karl to become emperor Karl IV. Ludwigs landgrab in Tyrol had not only alienated the Habsburgs but other princes too. And when Ludwig seized the inheritance of count William of Holland as well, the empire went into revolt.

In 1346, 5 years after Margarete had thrown out Johann-Heinrich of Luxemburg and 4 years after negotiations about the marriage between Rudolf and Catherine had begun, Karl, heir to Bohemia, was elected king of Romans in opposition to Ludwig the Bavarian. The subsequent war was won by Karl (episode 156), in part because the Habsburgs stayed neutral.

It would still take another 11 years before, in 1357 Rudolf of Habsburg and Catherine of Bohemia were joined in matrimony, but they were. Nevertheless things had changed dramatically by then. When in 1330 the Luxemburgs and Habsburgs were stell on eye level, by 1357 they were no longer. First the blind king John had significantly expanded the Luxemburg territory. Now his son Karl IV was busy to build a territorial connection from his lands in Bohemia all the way to Luxemburg in the West, something the Habsburg at that point could only dream of. And even more importantly, Karl had found a way to mobilise the riches of Bohemia on his behalf.

Meanwhile the Wittelsbach had also declined in stature as various divisions reduced the resources any one of them could mobilise. So even in combination, the Habsburgs and Wittelbachs were no longer able to seriously threaten the Luxemburgs under Karl IV.

Therefore the marriage between Rudolf and Catherine sealed not an alliance of equal partners.

And by how much their power was diminished became obvious when Karl IV promulgated his Golden Bull of 1356, which set the final list of prince electors. Who was missing from that list? The Bavarians and the Habsburgs. Yes, one could argue that the list had been informally agreed since the 1250s, and the Habsburgs were never on it, but still. If the constellation had been as it was 30 years earlier, they should have got on. But it wasn’t and they weren’t.

Despite that snub, the marriage still went ahead. The Habsburgs had become a junior partner in the grand dynastic project of the House of Luxemburg.

We are now in the year 1358 and finally, Albrecht the Wise succumbed to his many ailments. Rudolf took over and he tried desperately to bring the family back up to the status he believed it deserved.

To do that he pursued several avenues.

For one he wanted to elevate the status of Austria and his capital Vienna by establishing a bishopric there. As we know, establishing new bishopric is not easy. It is not as hard as it was in the 11th century when the emperor Henry II had to kneel before his bishops and admit to his own infertility to be allowed to set up Bamberg. But it was still a difficult thing to do. And even though the process had only just begun and the outcome was uncertain, Rudolf kicked off the construction of a magnificent church in Vienna, the Stephansdom. His plan included two towers, as was the prerogative of a cathedral, though that second tower was never built.

In 1365 he founded a university in Vienna, the second oldest in the empire after Prague, again in an attempt to get on eye level with his father-in-law.

And he did get his reward for loyalty, when he acquired the Tyrol. Not by force, but through an agreement with Margarete Maultasch, whose son Meinhard had died and who had fallen out with the Wittelsbachs. The Wittelsbachs were of course unhappy about that, but could not do much since the senior partner, emperor Karl IV, held his hand over his son-in-law.

Then the Habsburg-Luxemburg partnership grew even closer. Karl and Rudolf agreed that in case either of their families were to die out, the other would inherit their lands in their entirety. Whilst at this point either side had at least a few potential male heirs, the probability of such an event was not very high. But when we look back, the average time one family occupied a throne during that period was 150 to 200 years. So this was a long term option that became ever more valuable to either party as time progressed. And as the option gained in value so did the partnership, tying the Habsburgs ever closer to the Luxemburgs.

Beyond these tangible shifts, Rudolf triggered a mental and legal shift for the House of Habsburg that would be even more significant than the Stephansdom, the university and inheritance option.

In 1358 or 1359 Rudolf’s librarians “discovered” some remarkable ancient documents deep in the bowels of the ducal archives. In total these were five documents.

The oldest dates to October 4, 1058. In it the emperor Henry IV confirms the existence of certain privileges that have been awarded to the dukes of Austria by -drumroll- the emperors Julius Caesar and Nero. And given such letters are of such august provenance, here they are in their entirety (quote):

“We, Julius Caesar, Imperator and Priest of the Gods, we, supreme ruler of the imperial land and Augustus, we, sustainer of the entire world, grant Roman citizenship and our peace to the eastern march, the land and its inhabitants. We command you, by the strength of our triumph, to obey our uncle, the senator, because we have given you to him and his heirs and descendants as a fief to be held in perpetuity [….]

We grant him and his successors all the benefits of the aforementioned Eastern Lands. Furthermore, we appoint our uncle and all his successors as advisors to the most secret Roman council, so that from now on no important business or cause shall be undertaken without his knowledge.

Given at Rome, capital of the world, on Friday, in the first year of our reign and the first year of the gold tax.”

And here is the second letter

“We, Nero, friend of the gods and propagator of their faith, preceptor of the power of Rome, emperor, Caesar, and Augustus. We have agreed with our entire senate that the land of the Eastern March should be held in esteem above all other lands, because it and its inhabitants are praiseworthy above all those who are subjects of the Roman Empire.

Therefore, we declare that land to be granted our eternal peace and be exempt from all taxes and censuses that have been or will be imposed in the future by imperial power or by us or our successors or by anyone else. We also desire that the same land remain permanently free. We also decree by Roman authority that no adversity shall befall the aforementioned land from anyone. If anyone should act contrary to this, as soon as he has done so, he shall be under the ban of the Roman Empire and shall never be released from it.

Given at Lateran on the day of the great god Mars.” End quote

In the subscript the emperor Henry IV explains that after translating these imperial letters from the pagan language into Latin he was so impressed, he passed control of the archbishopric of Salzburg and ownership of the immensely rich abbey of Lorsch to duke Henry II of Austria.

Right

The next charter dated September 17, 1158 was even more expansive. In it the emperor Barbarossa granted the dukes of Austria in 17 articles the indivisibility of their territory, automatic inheritance of the duchy by the first born, including the right to pass it through the female line, the monopoly over jurisdiction without appeal to imperial courts, no obligation to appear at imperial diets or support the emperor militarily or financially, full control over the church in Austria etc., etc., pp. Effectively Barbarossa allowed Austria to enjoy all benefits of participation in the empire without any of the obligations. And to mark this special status, the duke of Austria was named a Palatinus Archidux, an imperial paladin and arch duke, who had to have precedence at all official events, sitting to the right of the emperor, wearing a ducal hat adorned with an eastern crown. If you look at the artwork for this episode, you can see Rudolf wearing this very special hat.

The next three documents are dated to the reigns of emperor Frederick II and King Rudolf I and confirmed the previous two after adding some further rights and privileges.

What an amazing find! Final proof that Austria and therefore its rulers were exceptional. Their endorsement, even descent from Caesars uncle gave them a pedigree none of the princely families ion the empire could match. They have been granted not just full autonomy by the great emperors of antiquity but also a permanent seat on the council, and no important decisions could be taken without consulting them.

So astonishing were these far reaching privileges, some people had doubts about the veracity of in particular the letters from Caesar and Nero. When the emperor Karl IV was asked to confirm these privileges, he sent copies to one of the 14th century most learned men, Francesco Petrarca, to check them out. Petrarca zoomed in on the imperial letters. His answer was not very flattering. He called them “such ridiculous forgeries, they must have come from either an “arch-jester, a bellowing ox, or a screaming donkey”. But he did not say that the document itself was a forgery, only that the chancellor of the emperor Henry IV way back in the 11th century who had included them into the charter, had been duped by a tremendously bad hustler.

Petrarch was not only one of the foremost scholars of Roman antiquity, he was also very much attached to his head. And such an important appendix could easily be lost if one accuses the duke, excuse me, palatine archduke of Austria of forgery. Much better and equally effective to claim some long dead scribe had been had by an unknown and equally very dead scoundrel.

When people refer to the privilegium maius, which is the name these documents are known by today, they usually describe it as a reaction to the snub of being left out in the list of Prince electors in Karl IV’s Golden Bull. And there was certainly an element of that here. The insistence on being enfeoffed at home whilst sitting atop a horse rather than kneeling before the emperor, the focus on the seating plan and the title of archduke, complete with special crown, feels a bit like sour grapes.

And I think I did describe it in such terms as well when I first mentioned it in episode 161.

But upon reflection and reading the actual text, it becomes clear that Rudolf pursued some tangible political objectives with this forgery that go well beyond the restoration of his injured pride.

The Privilegium Maius is based on a genuine privilege issued by Barbarossa in 1158, the so-called Privilegium Minus. There the dukes of Austria were already granted far reaching privileges and significant independence from the empire. Rudolf expanded this charter, adding things like primogeniture, full inheritability in the female line, full exemption from imperial courts, sovereign-like autonomy and the right to appoint bishops. And all these privileges were then to be applied to possessions outside Austria as well. As we will see, these provisions would be used by Rudolf and his successors to solidify their control of their territory. It was even used as late as 1740 to legitimize the inheritance of Maria Theresia.

When all these papers were handed to Karl IV for confirmation, he treated them, not as forgeries, but as some sort of shopping list. He granted his son in law some of the privileges he had included, but rejected others. It would be another Habsburg ruler, Friedrich III who would confirm the whole of Privilegium maius and all its components, putting it on the statue book where it remained until 1806. It was only in 1852 that it was officially recognized as a forgery.

So, as far as fakes go, this was probably one of the most consequential forgeries in European history.

That being said, the Privilegium Maius is not just about status and privileges, it is also about the way the Habsburgs saw themselves.

It is not unusual, or arguably even necessary for a ruling family to have an origin myth that lifts them above mere mortals. The more extreme versions of that were the Merovingians who traced themselves to a mythical sea monster, Julius Caesar who claimed descent from Venus and the emperors of Japan tracing themselves to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. In Christian Europe the descent from gods was replaced by emphasizing saints in the family tree, think Saint Louis for the French, Saint Stephen for the Hungarians, Edward the Confessor for the English, St. Olaf for the Norwegians and St. Wenceslaus for the Bohemians. Charlemagne, though not an official saint in the catholic church performed a similar function for the Holy Roman Emperors. Lesser houses did he same if they were lucky to have a suitable ancestor.

The Habsburgs had the problem that they had only recently risen to prominence and none of the their members had yet lived up to the basic standards of sainthood. In fact the only member of the family who got close was the very last Austrian emperor Charles I, the one whose heart lies in the chimney of the Holy House in Muri.

So, in the absence of one of their own, the Habsburgs appropriated Leopold of Babenberg, from the family that had ruled Austria from its inception until 1246. Unfortunately for the Habsburgs, they had zero blood relationship to the Babenbergers. But that did not stop them pretending they had. Many Habsburgs were given Leopold and Friedrich as first names, names that had been dominant in the Babenbergers family and had not appeared in the Habsburg family tree before.

So far, so normal. But then the Habsburgs go several steps further.

It is around the same time that Rudolf’s forgers made up ancient charters that an anonymous writer compiled the “Austrian Chronicle of the 95 Rulers”. In it we hear that Austria was founded, by the Jewish knight Abraham of Temonaria, 810 years after the flood, which equates to roughly 1500 BC. From then on, Austria and its ruling family were at the epicenter of European history. In an unbroken line that included Jewish patriarchs, the roman emperors and the Babenberger dukes of Austria, the right to rule the known world had come down to the House of Habsburg.

Such genealogical romances were not unusual at the time, remember that Barbarossa was seen as a descendant of the kings of Troy, but this tale is unique in its mix of biblical, ancient roman and relatively recent Austrian history. And they do not skip anyone. Austria, which the ancients called Noricum, was allegedly founded by Norix, the son of Hercules. Vienna was called that because Caesar had founded the city and had stayed there for 2 years, a Biennium and so forth and so forth.

This may all look like ridiculous overcompensation by a family that had risen fast, was seen as nouveau riche by its peers, and now found itself in decline.

But there is also another way to look at it. When Rudolf IV died 1365, barely 27 years old, he had laid the foundation for the sense of exceptionalism that will permeate the family from here on out. And he had given them the physical embodiment of that exceptionality, the title and headgear of an archduke, a title that does not exist in any other context and instantly identifies its bearer as a Habsburgs.

It is in this way that Rudolf was right when he called himself “the founder”. He may not have founded the dynasty in the sense of being its ancestor, but he founded the notion that being a Habsburg was something exceptional, something that goes beyond just being an important prince.

Rudolf left no sons, so that the role of the head of the family had to go to his brothers, Albrecht, called “with the plait” and Leopold, called the Just. Both were teenagers at the time and almost immediately quarreled. These facts, their youth and their quarrel sparked a last Wittelsbach attempt to recapture the Tyrol which the brothers just about managed to rebuff. Despite this joint success they kept going at each other, until in 1379 they divided the Habsburg lands amongst themselves. That was in direct violation of the Privilegium Maius, a long list of ordinances issued by previous archdukes and an explicit agreement made between the three brothers. It seems the notion of a common Habsburg mission had not yet had enough time to gestate into a tool that kept the family together.

And like these division often did, it dropped the family down another notch in the European power stakes. The other was the campaign that on July 9th, 1386, brought the younger and more impetuous brother, Leopold, to a hill near the Sempach lake where he would bring about the birth of a nation and the loss of his ancestral homelands. That we will discuss next week.

And before I go, just a big thank you to all of you who are supporting the show. Your encouragement in all its forms, not just financial, is what keeps this podcast going. If you want to become a patron, go to my website, historyofthegermans.com/support and sign up there. And let me know If you wish to have your full name read out to be there for eternity, or if you prefer just first name and initial.

Last thing, if you want to go into more detail on the things I mentioned or hear them in a different context, go to the episode website – the link is in the show notes. I have included hyperlinks to previous episodes where we discussed these topics, namely episodes 152 about Margarete Maultasch, 156 and 159 about the rise of Karl IV, 160/161 about the Golden Bull and 196 to 199 about the decline of the Wittelsbachs.

And with that, lets reconvene next week and go to Switzerland….