12 October – Too Protestant for his dynasty, too Catholic for reformers

Emperor Maximilian II passed away on 12 October 1576. He was the son of Emperor Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia.

One of Maximilian’s main dilemmas throughout his life was his inner inclination towards Protestantism. For the heir of a strictly Catholic dynasty in the age of religious conflict, this was unsettling, to put it mildly—if not outright scandalous. At one point in his youth, Emperor Ferdinand even considered excluding his son from the succession. For dynastic and familial reasons, Maximilian remained Catholic but sought to reconcile the two Christian confessions as much as possible. Nevertheless, religious differences continued to strain family relations, and years later Maximilian himself hesitated over the succession of his eldest son, Rudolf, a devout Catholic.

Maximilian died at the age of forty-nine from another attack of the acute abdominal pains he had long suffered from. His post-mortem autopsy report dramatically concluded that there was “not a pound of healthy flesh in His Majesty’s body.” Curiously, he refused the Catholic last rites.

Maximilian’s marriage to his first cousin Maria of Spain inaugurated the maze-like web of close kinship between the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs. However, their own line on the Imperial throne died out with their sons Rudolf and Matthias, who both remained without legitimate issue and were succeeded by their cousin Ferdinand II. Maximilian’s daughters Anna and Elisabeth became Queens of Spain and France, respectively.