Maximilian II of Habsburg
Maximilian II ruled the Habsburg lands for twelve years and was suspected by everyone of being a Protestant. Born in Vienna in 1527, the son of Ferdinand I and nephew of Charles V, he was educated partly in Spain and disliked it — the Spanish court's formality and its religious rigour both — and returned to Germany with a permanent preference for the German half of the family. His chaplain Johann Sebastian Pfauser was a Lutheran, and Maximilian kept him for years against pressure from his father and from Rome, and took communion in both kinds. Whether he was privately a Protestant is unresolved. He refused the last rites on his deathbed, which is the single most-cited piece of evidence and is not conclusive. What is certain is the policy. He was made to promise to remain Catholic as the price of the succession, and then governed with a tolerance that was almost unique among sixteenth-century rulers: he granted the Lutheran nobility of Lower and Upper Austria the right to worship on their estates in 1568, protected Protestants in Hungary and Bohemia, and refused to enforce the Council of Trent's decrees. He was elected emperor in 1564. He fought an inconclusive and expensive war with the Ottomans and agreed in 1568 to keep paying tribute for the part of Hungary he held. He was a considerable patron — of Arcimboldo, of Clusius the botanist, and of a menagerie that included an elephant walked to Vienna. He died in 1576, and his sons reversed almost all of it.
- Lived: 1527 CE – 1576 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
