Maria Leopoldine of Austria

Maria Leopoldine of Austria-Tyrol (6 April 1632 – 7 August 1649),[1] was by birth Archduchess of Austria and member of the Tyrolese branch of the House of Habsburg and by marriage the second spouse of her first cousin, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III. As such, she was Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, German Queen and Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia. She died in childbirth.

Maria Leopoldine of Austria
Portrait by Lorenzo Lippi, 1649
Holy Roman Empress; German Queen;
Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia;
Archduchess consort of Austria
Tenure2 July 1648 – 7 August 1649
Born(1632-04-06)6 April 1632
Innsbruck, Tyrol
Died7 August 1649(1649-08-07) (aged 17)
Vienna, Austria
SpouseFerdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor
IssueArchduke Charles Joseph of Austria
HouseHabsburg
FatherLeopold V, Archduke of Further Austria
MotherClaudia de' Medici
ReligionRoman Catholicism

Life

Early years

Maria Leopoldine was born in Innsbruck[2] on 6 April 1632 as the third (but second surviving) daughter and the fifth and youngest child of Leopold V, Archduke of Further Austria, and Claudia de' Medici. She was born posthumously, because her father died two months before her birth, on 13 September 1632.[2][3] On her father's side, her grandparents were Charles II, Archduke of Inner Austria and his wife Princess Maria Anna of Bavaria and on her mother's side her grandparents were Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and his wife Princess Christina of Lorraine. In addition to her full-siblings, she had an older half-sister, Vittoria della Rovere, born from her mother's first marriage with Federico Ubaldo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino.

Maria Leopoldine's oldest brother, Ferdinand Charles, inherited Further Austria, but Dowager Archduchess Claudia assumed regency because of her son's minority. In a letter written to his mother, Elizabeth of England, on 8 September 1641, Charles Louis of the Palatinate (later Elector Palatine) described the intentions of his uncle, King Charles I of England, and Maria Leopoldine's first cousin, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, to arrange a marriage between the 9-years-old Archduchess and himself; the marriage between them was to end "all grudges betweene our families".[4] However, the union never took place.

Marriage and death

Maria Leopoldine's coffin at the Imperial Crypt, Vienna.

In Linz on 2 July 1648 Maria Leopoldine married the widowed Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, thereby becoming empress of the Holy Roman Empire, Queen of the Germans, Queen of Hungary and Queen of Bohemia. The wedding ceremony was splendid;[5] The composer Andreas Rauch celebrated the marriage as "anticipating (with the help of Divine Providence) the most beautiful end of the Thirty Years' War"[6] and an opera titled I Trifoni d'Amore, produced by Giovanni Felice Sances, was meant to commemorate the event, but the Prague premiere was canceled at the last moment when King Vladislaus IV of Poland (Ferdinand III's brother-in-law) died within two months of the wedding; the planned Pressburg performance apparently never took place.[6] The new Empress was as closely related to her husband as her cousin and predecessor, Maria Anna of Spain; both marriages were means by which the House of Habsburg, from time to time, reinforced itself.[7]

Soon after her wedding, Maria Leopoldine became pregnant, and was depicted as such in the 1649 painting by the Italian painter and poet Lorenzo Lippi. The Imperial couple's only child, Archduke Charles Joseph of Austria, was born on 7 August 1649.[8] The childbirth was extremely difficult, ending in the death of the 17-year-old Empress.[9] Her husband remarried within two years, while their son died childless aged 14.[2][6][10] She is buried in tomb 21 in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna. The writer Wolf Helmhardt von Hohberg, then at the beginning of his career, sent to Emperor Ferdinand III a poem written in honour of the late Empress, called "Poem of tears" (de: Klag-Gedicht).[11]

Ancestors

References

  1. Marek, Miroslav. "genealogy.euweb.cz Habsburg". genealogy.euweb.cz. Retrieved 28 June 2017.
  2. Wurzbach 1861, p. 52.
  3. Hartland 1854, p. 69.
  4. Akkerman, Nadine (2011). The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199551088.
  5. Barthold, Friedrich Wilhelm (1843). Geschichte des großen deutschen Krieges vom Tode Gustav Adolfs. Liesching. ISBN 1409421198.
  6. Weaver, Andrew H. (2012). Sacred Music as Public Image for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III: Representing the Counter-Reformation Monarch at the End of the Thirty Years' War. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-1409421191.
  7. Wedgwood, Cicely Veronica (1967). The thirty years war. Jonathan Cape.
  8. Hartland 1854, p. 24.
  9. Coxe, William (1807). History of the House of Austria, from the Foundation of the Monarchy by Rhodolph of Hapsburgh, to the Death of Leopold the Second.
  10. Martin Mutschlechner: Ferdinand III - Ehen und Nachkommen in: habsburger.net [retrieved 03 November 2016].
  11. Kunisch, Hermann (1971). Literarisches Jahrbuch. Duncker & Humblot.
  12. Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  13. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  14. Wurzbach, Constantin, von, ed. (1860). "Habsburg, Karl II. von Steiermark" . Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich [Biographical Encyclopedia of the Austrian Empire] (in German). 6. p. 352 via Wikisource.
  15. Wurzbach, Constantin, von, ed. (1860). "Habsburg, Leopold V." . Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich [Biographical Encyclopedia of the Austrian Empire] (in German). 6. p. 416 via Wikisource.
  16. Obermayer-Marnach, Eva (1953), "Anna Jagjello", Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) (in German), 1, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 299; (full text online)
  17. Goetz, Walter (1953), "Albrecht V.", Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) (in German), 1, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 158–160; (full text online)
  18. Wurzbach, Constantin, von, ed. (1861). "Habsburg, Maria von Bayern" . Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich [Biographical Encyclopedia of the Austrian Empire] (in German). 7. p. 20 via Wikisource.
  19. Wurzbach, Constantin, von, ed. (1860). "Habsburg, Anna von Oesterreich (1528–1587)" . Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich [Biographical Encyclopedia of the Austrian Empire] (in German). 6. p. 151 via Wikisource.
  20. "The Medici Granducal Archive" (PDF). The Medici Archive Project. pp. 12–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 April 2005. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
  21. Wurzbach, Constantin, von, ed. (1860). "Habsburg, Claudia von Florenz" . Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich [Biographical Encyclopedia of the Austrian Empire] (in German). 6. p. 159 via Wikisource.
  22. Cesati, Franco (1999). Medici. Firenze: La Mandragora. p. 75. ISBN 88-85957-36-6.
  23. "Christina of Denmark (1521–1590)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Gale Research. 2002. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
  24. "Christine of Lorraine (c. 1571–1637)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Gale Research. 2002. Retrieved 28 August 2018.
  25. "Medici, Catherine de (1519–1589)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Gale Research. 2002. Retrieved 28 August 2018.

Further reading

Maria Leopoldine of Austria
Born: 6 April 1632 Died: 7 July 1649
Royal titles
Preceded by
Maria Anna of Spain
Empress of the Holy Roman Empire
German Queen, Archduchess consort of Austria

1648–1649
Vacant
Title next held by
Eleanor of Mantua
Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia
1648–1649

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