Introduction
This study offers a close look at the course of rituals connected with the dying, death, and burials of Central European Habsburgs in the early modern period. In interpreting the rituals and symbols used in the farewells to the deceased Habsburg rulers, it draws on Ernst Kantorowicz’s concept of the king’s two bodies.Footnote 1 Aware of the possible stereotypical patterns used in funeral celebrations, it finds theoretical support in historical anthropological approaches and concepts of symbolic communication.Footnote 2 It also emphasizes gender and the regal status of the deceased. The study covers the Holy Roman emperors, beginning with Ferdinand I (1503–64), Maximilian II (1527–76), Rudolf II (1552–1612), Matthias II (1557–1619), Ferdinand II (1578–1637), Ferdinand III (1608–57), Leopold I (1640–1705), and ending with Joseph I (1678–1711) and Charles VI (1685–1740), as well as their wives Maria of Spain (1548–76), Anna of Tyrol (1585–1618), Margaret Therese of Spain (1651–73), Claudia Felicitas of Tyrol (1653–76), Eleonora Magdalena of Neuburg (1655–1720), and, where the source material allows, other members of the family, such as descendants of the Styrian branch of the Habsburgs.Footnote 3
The article first discusses the historiographical framework of research into the final moments of the Central European Habsburg rulers in the early modern period. It also examines the heuristic bases from which the phenomenon in question can be studied. Next, the article closely follows the course of the Habsburgs’ illnesses that immediately preceded their deaths; the rituals that accompanied the rulers on their deathbeds; and their deaths, autopsies, funerals, and subsequent mourning ceremonies, including the dissemination of information about their deaths to various parts of the Habsburg monarchy, the Holy Roman Empire, and other European states. The study will conclude with a reflection on the representation of imperial majesty in the allegorical language of mourning ceremonies.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the history of death, dying, and burials has formed an integral part of Western European historiography. It has, however, often focused on the description of the funerary material culture and not given systematic attention to the symbolic meanings of the complex rituals surrounding last farewells. These important rituals and the narratives they conveyed reflected the values of the actors’ thought worlds and the time-conditioned demands on their representation.Footnote 4 The Central European Habsburgs in particular have long been neglected, although art historians have studied their final resting places.Footnote 5 Only in the late 1980s did the first comprehensive monograph on the Viennese court’s mourning ceremonies appear.Footnote 6 This was followed, a few years later, by an art historical discussion on the significance of the castrum doloris and other types of ephemeral architecture.Footnote 7 These works, however, did not immediately stimulate scholarly interest in further exploring the deaths and funerals of the early modern Habsburgs.Footnote 8
This has changed in recent years. Using a historical anthropological perspective, this new body of scholarship has viewed these ritualized last farewells as evocative symbolic representations.Footnote 9 Some scholars have also begun to question whether the Enlightenment contributed to the desacralization of imperial majesty by transforming and secularizing the Habsburgs’ traditional funeral ceremony, the form of which became established around the mid-seventeenth century.Footnote 10 This scholarship has produced comparative works on the funerary culture of European rulers in the early modern period.Footnote 11 The deaths of Habsburg empresses and archduchesses have, however, received only marginal attention in comparative historical scholarship.Footnote 12 This article therefore examines the rituals associated with the dying and final farewells of early modern Habsburg rulers, both males and females. It argues that their funerary representations included symbols of the Catholic faith, territorial rule, political power, and dynastic memory of the deceased monarchs. Moreover, it traces their transformation from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century.Footnote 13
This study of the death, dying, and burials of Central European Habsburgs uses a wide range of sources. Crucial among these sources are written and printed descriptions of funeral celebrations by authors of different social statuses.Footnote 14 Such accounts depicted or illustrated an official ceremonial event organized by a particular court, town, or religious community.Footnote 15 The representational dimension of these sources must be emphasized, as readers were presented with a stylized, positive, and often idealized image of the main actors in the funeral celebration, even as they lacked personal testimonies of immediate participants.Footnote 16 This lack is compensated for by the newsletters and diaries of foreign envoys in the Habsburg service, and the personal correspondence of members of the imperial family and high court dignitaries.Footnote 17
Extensive descriptions of the Habsburgs’ funeral rituals are also contained in contemporary periodicals, which reprinted reports without critical examination.Footnote 18 A similar approach was taken in the collections Diarium Europaeum and Theatrum Europaeum, and in contemporary biographies of the rulers, which were intended to convey a positive image of the Habsburgs.Footnote 19 From a heuristic point of view, the ceremonial records and protocols that began to be systematically kept at the Viennese court from 1652 onward cannot be overlooked. These regimented all interactions at the imperial court, including funeral celebrations, by describing the sequence of the ritual’s individual steps, starting with the death of a reigning member of the Habsburg family and ending with the placement of the remains in the tomb.Footnote 20 Although the funeral of Ferdinand IV in 1654 became the model for the conduct of later royal funerals, the full codification of the funeral ritual occurred only in the mid-eighteenth century with the publication of the compendium Monumenta Augustae Domus Austriacae. Footnote 21 Finally, funeral sermons, panegyric consolationes, and visual evidence from iconographic sources provide further evidence.Footnote 22
The family piety of the Austrian Habsburgs, known as the Pietas Austriaca, played a key role in the rituals associated with dying, death, and funerals from the sixteenth century onward and reached its apogee in the first half of the eighteenth century. It closely linked religious faith with political power in the vein of the Catholic Counter Reformation and provided the Habsburgs with legitimacy characterized by a special relationship between God and the dynasty. This relationship was shaped by divine election, according to which the Habsburgs stood out from other ruling houses as an exemplary Catholic dynasty. At the same time, they had to support and defend the “one true” faith—Catholicism. They expressed their Catholic piety through support for the Church, monasteries, and foundations; daily attendance at church services; the establishment of and regular visits to places of pilgrimage; general zeal for the Catholic faith, veneration of the Eucharist with the Holy Cross, and Marian devotion; and in the rituals examined below.Footnote 23
Habsburg Illnesses
The course of the illnesses of the reigning Habsburgs were recorded in the pages of the courtiers’ personal papers and diaries and were also the subject of news reports by foreign envoys to the imperial court.Footnote 24 This topic has often been overlooked in research on the deaths of these rulers and their final farewells. The purpose here is not to provide diagnoses of their diseases but to determine whether illnesses prevented the sick Habsburgs from carrying out their daily duties. The following examines previously unknown testimonies about the rulers’ bodies just before death.
During an illness, the monarch was usually able to manage the duties of his office with the help of his closest courtiers and servants. If he became visibly weak and bedridden, he would delegate the management of time-consuming political affairs to his successor, usually his eldest son.Footnote 25 For instance, the gravely ill Ferdinand I, whose health—according to the testimony of diplomats, agents, and courtiers—had limited his performance of regal duties since the end of 1563, only handed over the rule of the Holy Roman Empire and the lands of the Habsburg monarchy to his eldest son, Maximilian II, in April 1564. For the last months of his life, he did not leave his bedroom in the Hofburg and spent his days spiritually preparing for his departure from the earthly world. From late May to the beginning of June 1564, the monarch’s personal physicians saw a divine miracle as the only hope for an improvement in his critical state of health. Around 15 July 1564, Ferdinand I fell into a brief unconsciousness. He died of a fever, during a violent coughing fit on 25 July 1564.Footnote 26
A similar pattern played out with his son, Maximilian II, whose health seriously deteriorated in the middle of 1572. He did not grant audiences for several months and severely limited the performance of other imperial duties. He nonetheless traveled to Prague, Dresden, and Ratisbon in 1575. Although he was again in severe pain and aware of his poor health, he managed to attend to everyday political affairs with the help of his closest courtiers and servants. A turning point came in the spring months of 1576, when the monarch did not leave his bed in the Hofburg and entrusted his son Rudolf II to represent him in time-consuming political negotiations. Despite his pain, he again traveled to Ratisbon, where he opened the Imperial Diet. However, his health did not allow him to grant audiences or to take part in parliamentary proceedings, and he died on 12 October 1576.Footnote 27
Rudolf II also had long periods when he could not perform his duties as ruler. From the late 1570s to the early 1580s, health problems caused by syphilis (according to doctors) or melancholy (according to foreign envoys) caused a lack of interest in political affairs. In the spring of 1581, stories of a gravely ill emperor, who had been struggling in the seclusion of his rooms for eight months with genital swelling, fever, and vomiting, spread through the capitals of Europe. Although his health improved slightly in the summer of 1581, his ailments recurred with increasing frequency in the following years. Rudolf’s health deteriorated rapidly in the early 1600s, and he suffered from lower limb pain, fevers, and insomnia. The Spanish envoy, Baltasar Zuñiga, portrayed him as a human wreck in a report to Madrid. The envoy made no secret of the need to declare the ailing emperor incapable of governing. According to the testimony of physicians, the weakened and seriously ill Rudolf II was fully conscious until his death, which occurred on 20 January 1612 in his bedroom at Prague Castle.Footnote 28
A similar fate awaited his successor Matthias, who succumbed to long-term illness in the Hofburg on 20 March 1619.Footnote 29 Not long before his death, valets had dressed him on the bed and supported him so that he could take a few steps toward the table where a plate of fortifying poultry soup was placed; yet he suddenly lost consciousness and fell to the ground. After being carried back to the bed, he awoke and began to scream that he could not see his hand. Ferdinand of Styria, the papal nuncio, secret councilors, and a personal confessor hastily arrived in the bedroom and administered the last rites to the dying monarch. A physician attempted to revive Matthias by massaging his heart, but in vain. The monarch suffered from severe pains in his lower limbs caused by gout and was almost immobile, so he spent the last weeks of his life in bed. Nausea, insomnia, and problems with urination were accompanied by severe depression.Footnote 30
The sources reveal that many rulers suffered from a wide range of ailments. Although Ferdinand II suffered from dropsy, he made a journey to Ratisbon for the Electoral Council in late 1636. On his return, he was stricken with a three-day fever in Wels. Back in Vienna, the emperor continued to experience physical weakness. The physicians, therefore, ordered a cleansing treatment, during which he consumed various laxative drinks. On the night of 14–15 February 1637, he suddenly awoke, breathing heavily and suffering from a fever. On the morning of his death, he developed a build-up of mucus in the lungs and trachea, accompanied by excessive sweating. As a later autopsy showed, the poor condition of his lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and stomach must have caused the monarch great pain.Footnote 31
Ferdinand III, on the other hand, had been plagued by intense abdominal pains since the summer of 1656, which recurred regularly at intervals of several days. At the beginning of February 1657, gout was added to these health problems. According to a report by the papal nuncio, he suffered from mucus build-up and sharp stomach pains, so he transferred a considerable amount of power to his younger brother, Archduke Leopold William.Footnote 32 As the emperor’s son and heir to the throne, Leopold I, was a minor, he had appointed his politically more experienced brother as his guardian and advisor. On the afternoon of 1 April 1657, the monarch began to lose consciousness and died peacefully between 4 and 5 a.m. the following day.Footnote 33 Leopold I himself died on 5 May 1705. Reports suggest that the first warning signs were a lack of appetite and nausea, which manifested themselves a fortnight beforehand and forced the monarch to remain lying down. These were compounded by general physical weakness.Footnote 34 His son and heir, Joseph I, died just six years later. He had contracted some sort of venereal disease in his youth, probably syphilis. But his death was due to the smallpox epidemic that spread in the Austrian lands in the spring of 1711.Footnote 35
Although Habsburg rulers were able to hide the symptoms of their illnesses from the eyes of court society for a long time, their personal chamberlains and confessors knew about them. Foreign diplomats too took note of the emperor’s poor health, especially when illness made it impossible for him to carry out his everyday duties as ruler. It was then that news of the monarch’s infirmity invariably leaked out to higher court dignitaries, the extended family, and inhabitants of the residential city. During a ruler’s illness, the population was subsequently called to regular prayers and processions for the man’s recovery. Higher members of the imperial court and the central administration took turns during three daily prayers in the Hofburg court chapel. At the same time, noisy entertainments were curtailed in the capital of the Habsburg monarchy and its various possessions.Footnote 36 The streets around the Hofburg were covered with sand to muffle any unpleasant noises that might disturb the sick monarch. As the dying ruler received the Sacrament of the Altar and the Last Rites, calls for general humility and contemplation went out from the court.Footnote 37
The “Good Death” and Autopsy
The bedside of the sick ruler was attended not only by his wife, descendants and family members, closest courtiers, personal physicians, and confessors, but also by foreign diplomats, especially the papal nuncio and Spanish envoy. Their presence served as a check on the orthodoxy of the dying, as they were to oversee the good death and then bear witness to its progress as a testament to the ruler’s Catholic faith.Footnote 38 The concept of a “good death” in the early modern period was based on contemporary religious, cultural, and social ideas about life, death, and the afterlife. It was a religious and social Christian ideal, as death was not considered the end of life, but served as an opportunity for spiritual purification and preparation for meeting God. Its image was associated with confession, the reception of the Eucharist, and the conferral of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction.Footnote 39 These rituals provided the dying monarch with the divine grace needed to save his soul. The Catholic Church considered these last rites to be a spiritual aid through which the dying could better resist the snares of the devil, who intensified his efforts at the moment of the deceased’s departure from earthly life.Footnote 40
The clergy celebrated mass continuously at small altars placed in the room of the dying Habsburg ruler. On these shrines, precious reliquaries with relics of saints from the imperial treasury could be displayed to protect the sick ruler and contribute to his eventual recovery. When Leopold I died, the altar in the emperor’s bedroom contained a vial of the blood of Jesus Christ, a spike from his crown of thorns, the nail with which he was nailed to the cross, part of the arm of St. Anne, and other relics.Footnote 41
Nor did the monarch forget to say goodbye to his wife and his children, especially the heir to the throne, or to other people, such as personal servants. At the same time, he blessed all those present. If a descendant could not be present, as was the case with Charles VI, who was in the Iberian Peninsula at the time of Leopold I’s death, the dying monarch did so through his portrait, which was in the room.Footnote 42 Similarly, at the moment of his death, Ferdinand I looked at the likeness of his late wife, Anna Jagiello, who had died seventeen years before.Footnote 43
Contemporaries fully expected the deaths of Habsburg rulers to be preceded by supernatural phenomena. This was in accordance with the religious discourse of the time, the uncertainty of life, and the mentality of the period, which viewed the world as a space full of hidden forces that intervened in the lives of individuals, society, and nature. By these supernatural means, God warned a gravely ill ruler in advance to prepare himself for death.Footnote 44 When Ferdinand III was dying, a great fire broke out in one of the Hofburg kitchens at midnight the day before his death, and it was eventually extinguished only with great difficulty. According to the influential courtier Johann Adolf of Schwarzenberg, the imperial general Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the Prague archbishop Ernst Adalbert of Harrach, it was a clear divine sign of the emperor’s imminent death.Footnote 45 They also reported that shortly after the birth of Archduke Ferdinand Joseph Alois, one of the eagles kept in the Hofburg had laid an egg. On the other hand, on the day of Ferdinand III’s death, an old eagle died not long before the monarch. In contemporary thought, the eagle served as a widely understood symbol of the Habsburg family and imperial majesty.Footnote 46
As a rule, on the day of death or the following morning, the court physicians conducted an autopsy to determine the cause of death. The autopsy on the body of Ferdinand I thus took place the day after his death on 26 July 1564. According to the reports, the physicians saw the main cause of Ferdinand’s death as a pathological condition of his lungs, associated with repeated attacks of fever, chills, and a choking cough.Footnote 47 These data have provided some modern biographers with the basis for a retrospective death diagnosis, according to which the Central European ruler died of advanced tuberculosis.Footnote 48
The autopsy reports often contained highly detailed information. In the report on Maximilian II’s body, the physicians noted that the skin on the right side of the emperor’s rib cage had a distinct blue discoloration and that clotted blood restricted the patency of the main heart artery and filled the left ventricle. They also noticed an unnatural discoloration of the deceased monarch’s lungs, which were covered with dark secretion. The pleural cavity was flooded with a large amount of yellowish fluid. The enlarged liver was covered with dark spots. The gallbladder and spleen were hard, and the left kidney contained a large quantity of kidney stones.Footnote 49
Similarly, in the autopsy report of Rudolf II, the physicians noted that the emperor’s heart chambers probably contained slight scarring, so it cannot be ruled out that the emperor may have suffered a heart attack. The deceased’s blackened lungs were saturated with clotted blood. The hardened liver retained bile, which formed inflammatory deposits on its surface. The open wounds on the skin of both legs were contaminated with infectious anthrax. The autopsy report suggests that an advanced syphilitic infection may not have been the sole cause of Rudolf’s death. Although diseases of the respiratory and digestive systems also affected the emperor’s health, his death may have been hastened by a diseased heart.Footnote 50 At the autopsy of Anna of Tyrol, in contrast, it was found that the small heart of the poor woman showed no pathological changes, that “black blood” had accumulated in the lungs, that the stomach contained a large amount of fat, and that two stones were found in the gallbladder, one the size of a nutmeg, the other the size of a pea. But nothing unusual was found in the liver, kidneys, pancreas, and duodenum, and there was free fluid in the abdominal cavity.Footnote 51
In the case of the death of pregnant empresses, the physicians mentioned in the autopsy report the possible sex of the unborn offspring, as was the case with the first wife of Leopold I, Margaret Therese of Austria, who died on 12 March 1673.Footnote 52 Some Habsburgs explicitly refused an autopsy and subsequent embalming of their dead bodies in their wills. Eleonora Magdalena of Neuburg, the third wife of Leopold I, stipulated that no male person was allowed to touch, uncover, dissect, or embalm her body after she had died. One of the chambermaids was to wash the deceased’s face and hands, in which a cross and a rosary were placed.Footnote 53
In accordance with the discourse of the time, only exemplary Catholics were endowed with a good death by divine will. The baroque period brought an even greater emphasis on manifestations of supernatural mysticism and imagination to the deathbeds in the Hofburg. Yet a closer understanding of the miracles associated with the deathbed has so far been hampered by the lack of in-depth research on the issue.Footnote 54 At the same time, the autopsy reports reveal worldly medical diagnoses of the causes of death and provide answers to why the sick ruler could not perform his state duties in the expected manner.
Display of the Dead Body
The various steps of the subsequent funeral ceremony became established in the Habsburg family only in the mid-seventeenth century, when established practice was laid down in writing. After dissection, embalming, dressing, placement in coffins, and sending mourning notices to the closest survivors, the dead bodies of Habsburg rulers were put on public display.Footnote 55 Their hearts, brains, and other internal organs were typically placed in special vessels that were either added to the coffin or buried separately. The body of Ferdinand I, for example, was displayed in the court chapel of the Hofburg in Vienna on 30 July 1564.Footnote 56 Since Maximilian II died in Ratisbon, his remains were first kept in the residence of the bishop, from where they were apparently transferred to St. Michael’s Chapel on 19 October 1576. Only on 6 November 1576 did the coffin take its place on the catafalque in front of the high altar in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Ratisbon. Maximilian II’s remains were next transported on the Danube to the Wilhering Monastery near Linz and then to Prague.Footnote 57
Other bodies moved as well. Two days after his death on 10 July 1590, the remains of Charles of Styria were displayed in the court chapel of his residence in Graz and were transferred from there to St. Egidius Cathedral on 14 October 1590.Footnote 58 When Ferdinand of Tyrol died on 24 January 1595, his body was placed in the chapel at the Ruhelust Castle in Innsbruck, and three days later it was taken to the Silver Chapel of the court church of the Holy Cross.Footnote 59 From 21 January to 5 February 1612, the body of Rudolf II was displayed in the room on the second floor of the south wing of Prague Castle; the unusually long period during which visitors and the inhabitants of his residence were able to bid farewell to the monarch was influenced by the freezing winter weather and a well-executed embalming.Footnote 60 Matthias’s body was displayed for four days in March 1620, on a mournfully decorated catafalque in an anteroom through which the Hofburg was entered.Footnote 61
The location and duration of the public display of the rulers’ bodies became fixed only during the first half of the seventeenth century. In the case of men, it was the Knights’ Hall in the Hofburg, or the first antechamber, whereas the bodies of deceased women were displayed in the Summer Room, and the remains of other family members in the antechamber of their apartments.Footnote 62 The embalmed bodies were usually placed for three days on a three-tiered dais (only two tiers for archdukes and archduchesses) adorned with gold and silver drapes, under a black velvet canopy, in a room whose walls were also decorated with black draperies. The deceased men were dressed in black velvet robes with a hat on their heads and a cord at their side; the skirts of the deceased women were usually decorated with a floral pattern, their heads with a white cap. Mary Anne of Austria and Claudia Felicitas of Tyrol, as an expression of personal piety, wanted to be buried in the habit of Carmelite and Dominican nuns, respectively. Deceased widows were dressed in black.Footnote 63 The bodies of the late high ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Habsburg family, especially bishops, wore a gown, humeral, alba, cingulum, maniple, stole, and blue cassock.Footnote 64 On the other hand, the body was not displayed if a member of the Habsburg family died of an infectious disease. This happened in 1654 to the twenty-one-year-old heir to the throne, Ferdinand IV, and in 1703 to the sixteen-year-old Archduchess Maria Josepha, daughter of Joseph I.Footnote 65
Ritual objects likewise became standard accompaniments of death. Many candles flickered around the deceased. At their feet stood a large crucifix and an aspergillum of holy water. A smaller crucifix and a rosary were placed in their hands. Around their necks hung the Order of the Golden Fleece, and at their right hand was a gilded rapier. Above the head dangled an emblem with a double-headed eagle. On cushions beside the body sat the insignia of their power and the crowns of the territories they ruled. The crucifix gave the message of the martyrdom of Jesus Christ, whereas the flaming candles referred to the eternal life of the dead man. The imperial and royal crowns symbolized political power, the scepter represented territorial rule. The golden fleece, rapier, and sword illustrated the virtues of the Christian knight. The rosary and the altar testified to the Catholic piety of the deceased.Footnote 66
Priests celebrated services continuously at two to four altars placed around the body. Every day between 10 and 11 in the morning and 6 and 7 in the evening, imperial singers recited the Psalm Miserere mei, Deus, and from noon until one bells rang throughout the city. Their sound symbolized the harmony of the world and the heavenly spheres. At the same time, it announced that the soul of the deceased had gone to heaven.Footnote 67 A guard of honor consisting of chamberlains, clergy, and members of the imperial guard dressed in long black coats took turns kneeling by the bodies on display.
During the public display of the body, the bereaved family members of the late ruler stayed in seclusion. The case of the heir apparent was probably related to the medieval notion of succession to the throne: a ruler was not considered truly dead until his physical body was buried, and so the heir did not appear in public until the funeral.Footnote 68 The display of the remains represented the first step in the Catholic funeral ritual, in which the departure of the ruler’s biological body from the earthly world was replaced in collective memory by the immortality of his social body, whose symbolic image was shaped in subsequent mourning ceremonies.
Funeral Announcements and Condolences
The next step in preparing for the final farewell was to send out funeral announcements. After the death of Anna of Tyrol on 14 December 1618, for example, Matthias ordered that the mourning notices be transmitted first to his closest relatives and then to his scattered possessions. As early as 14 December, news of Anna’s death was sent from Vienna to Innsbruck to her mother, Anna Katharina Gonzaga. The emperor ordered further announcements to be sent to Brussels to his only surviving brother Albrecht, who was administering the Spanish Netherlands, and to his cousins from the Styrian line of the Habsburg dynasty: Leopold, Charles, and Ferdinand. One day later, a funeral announcement was dispatched from the Hofburg to the widowed king of Spain and Portugal, Philip III (whose prematurely deceased wife was Matthias’s cousin, Archduchess Margaret).Footnote 69
The choice of addressees mirrored not only the family relations of the Habsburgs but also represented the extent of their territorial rule (although no drafts have survived of Matthias’s letters announcing his wife’s death to the electors and other clerical and secular princes in the Holy Roman Empire). Indeed, the recipients of the funeral announcements demonstrated on two levels the political unity and strength of the Habsburg dynasty. The first referred to the political unity of the cousins in their position as provincial rulers of the Austrian lands temporarily divided after the death of Ferdinand I in 1564 into three territorial units with residences in Vienna, Innsbruck, and Graz. The second symbolic dimension, expressing the unity of the Austrian and Spanish branches of the Habsburg family, was the funeral announcement sent to Brussels, which recalled the legacy of the Dukes of Burgundy. Both branches of the dynasty claimed the Burgundian heritage.Footnote 70
Further letters followed. On 15 December 1618, Matthias ordered brief funeral announcements to be sent to the Kingdom of Bohemia, where he ordered the immediate declaration of an unspecified period of mourning. Referring to the customs applied after the death of previous Bohemian monarchs, he forbade weddings and other noisy celebrations during the mourning period. Only the ringing of bells at noon could break the required silence.Footnote 71 It was not until 16 and 17 December 1618 that letters with Matthias’s signature were sent to the highest court officials at the Hofburg, which included an order for the compulsory wearing of mourning clothes. The court, privy chamber, and war councilors, several of the highest court officials, and all ladies-in-waiting were entitled to mourning clothes paid for by the emperor. Matthias communicated the details of the mourning for his wife’s death to the Kingdom of Hungary in a handwritten letter on 17 December 1618. On the same day, he addressed the Land Marshal of Lower Austria with the order to declare mourning in the province. Two days later, mourning notices left the Hofburg addressed to the representatives of the princely houses in Europe, especially in the Italian peninsula, which were linked to the Habsburgs by ties of kinship.Footnote 72
Within weeks of announcements like these being sent out, the next of kin received letters of condolence. Their contents stressed the virtuous qualities and noble deeds of the deceased, which formed the backbone of their social body and entered the memory of the surviving representatives of the Habsburg dynasty. The condolences received after the death of Anna of Tyrol therefore recalled the characteristic qualities of the poor woman, especially her unusually strong Catholic piety and mercy.Footnote 73 Foreign envoys also offered their condolences in person to the bereaved during a public audience in Vienna a few days after the end of the funeral ceremonies.Footnote 74
An analysis of funeral announcements and condolences provides a remarkable insight into the mindset of the time, revealing a set of ideas about the stratification of early modern European society. Recipients of funeral announcements were ranked thus according to the hierarchical order of the closest blood relatives and the highest authorities of the earthly and secular power. The condolence letters that invariably followed further revealed—and contributed to the maintenance of—the complex and far-reaching familial and political networks that bound the Habsburg lands together. These and similar documents have not yet become a significant research topic in studies of early modern rulers’ funeral celebrations.
Mourning Rituals
Even as the funeral announcements were being sent out, the closest surviving relatives began to consider the final resting place of the deceased ruler, which was often mentioned in the will. After the death of Ferdinand I, his eldest son Maximilian II, who executed the last will and testament of his father, took charge of the preparations for the final farewell. According to the wording of the will of 1 June 1543, Ferdinand I chose St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, where he wanted to be buried next to Anna Jagiello (which he made clear in a second will, dated 4 February 1547).Footnote 75 Three decades later, when Maximilian II died, his surviving sons decided the matter because the ruler did not make a will specifying the final resting place. According to the original ideas advocated by Archduke Ernst, the last farewell to the late ruler was to take place in Vienna. However, due to the plague epidemic, Rudolf II decided to give his father a burial in Prague.Footnote 76
Other members of the royal family chose different sites. The widow Maria of Bavaria oversaw the last farewell to Charles of Styria, as well as the nephew of the deceased, Archduke Ernst. In his will from 1 June 1584, Charles of Styria had chosen the monastery in Seckau as his final resting place, where he had personally supervised the construction of the family tomb.Footnote 77 Similarly, Ferdinand of Tyrol designated the Silver Chapel in Innsbruck in his will from 18 June 1594. His first-born son Andrew of Austria undertook its execution and made the arrangements for the final farewell.Footnote 78
In the second half of the seventeenth century, responsibility for the preparation and proper conduct of funerals was increasingly passed to the highest court officials, headed by the Master of the Court. When Leopold I died on 5 May 1705, Ferdinand Bonaventura of Harrach, the Master of the Court, and Henry Francis of Mansfeld, the High Chamberlain, met an hour after his death to discuss the display of the deceased’s body in the Hofburg Knights’ Hall and the decoration of the room. Further arrangements were discussed the following day during a session of the privy conference. In the meantime, the courtiers studied the ceremonial protocols describing the course of the funeral ceremonies of previous members of the family.Footnote 79 In this way, the last farewells to the Habsburg rulers took on a unified form.Footnote 80
Preparations for funerals could be prolonged by slowness in setting the dates of the funeral or by its postponement. The date of the last farewell to Charles of Styria, and especially to Ferdinand of Tyrol, was affected by delays in the completion of their tombstones.Footnote 81 The delays in the funeral ceremonies of Ferdinand I and Maximilian II were instead political and dynastic. Maximilian II postponed the decision on the date of his father’s funeral due to the tense situation on the Transylvanian-Hungarian border, the negotiations of the Imperial and Bohemian Provincial Diet, and his poor health. Nearly a year after his father’s death, in June 1565, he finally decided that the last farewell to Ferdinand I would first take place in Vienna on 25 July 1565, the anniversary of his death, before he was buried in Prague in accordance with the wording of the will. However, in view of the meeting of the Bohemian Provincial Diet, which was due to begin on 30 June 1565, there was a danger that representatives of the Bohemian Estates would not come to Vienna, so Maximilian II again postponed the date of the funeral ceremony to 5 August 1565.Footnote 82
When Maximilian died, Rudolf II sent his brothers, Archdukes Matthias and Maximilian, to Wilhering in early January 1577 to transport the emperor’s remains to Prague. Yet he was reluctant to decide on the date of the final farewell to their father. In the end, he yielded to pressure from the highest court and officials of the Kingdom of Bohemia, who demanded that the funeral take place before the journey of the new emperor to the lands of the Bohemian Crown, and no later than the end of April 1577. Contrary to original expectations, the last farewell did not begin until 22 March 1577, because the castrum doloris in front of the high altar in St. Vitus Cathedral was not completed in time.Footnote 83
The funeral procession represented another obligatory step in the Catholic funeral ritual, and close family members, court officials, and high provincial officials were carefully arranged in it. In the case of Ferdinand I, the deceased came first in the procession. The emperor, in his coffin and in front of the bier, appeared as a virtuous Christian knight adorned with the Order of the Golden Fleece, the imperial crown on his helmet, the great imperial coat of arms, and armor bearing the image of a double-headed eagle. The presence of the imperial, Bohemian, and Hungarian crown jewels signaled his temporal power, just as the placement of his male descendants in places of honor behind the bier showed the power of the ruling family.Footnote 84 The next part of the procession was dedicated to the representation of the territorial government of Ferdinand I. Each region was represented by a trio of noblemen, who displayed on banners and horse rugs the emblems of all the lands under Habsburg rule. These rituals for Ferdinand I shaped later practices.
Great attention was also paid to the routes these funeral processions took. When Maximilian II died in Prague, his funeral procession led from the Church of St. James to Old Town Square, then continued through the Fruit Market and past the Church of St. Clement, from where it headed across the Charles Bridge to the Lesser Town of Prague, where it turned off to Hradčany to St. Vitus Cathedral. Wooden footbridges along the route covered the usual dirt and puddles. In several places, the city gates were widened to allow the procession to pass through. Armored guards with guns and spears stood along the entire route.Footnote 85 Royal burials occurred not just in Vienna, but across the Habsburg monarchy. Ferdinand I and his wife Anna Jagiello were placed in the crypt of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, although their remains were later moved above ground to the cathedral’s choir.Footnote 86 Charles of Syria, in contrast, was buried in 1590 in a tomb in the Seckau monastery, which he and his wife Maria of Bavaria had begun to build when their firstborn son had died; Maria of Bavaria was later buried in the same tomb.Footnote 87 The coffin of Ferdinand of Tyrol in contrast was placed in the Silver Chapel in Innsbruck. His first wife, Philippina Welser, was buried in the same place.Footnote 88
The year 1617 was an important milestone for the burials of the Habsburgs. In her will, Anna of Tyrol expressed the wish that she and her husband Matthias should be buried together in the Angel Crypt in the Capuchin church and monastery in Vienna. Because both died before the crypt was completed, they were temporarily buried in the church of the Poor Clares of Our Lady Queen of Angels. Only in 1633 were the coffins of both spouses transferred to the Crypt of the Angels, which had been built to Giovanni Pieroni’s design between 1622 and 1627.Footnote 89 The crypt in the Capuchin church soon became the official hereditary burial place of the Central European Habsburgs, fulfilling a similar role to El Escorial for the Spanish monarchs or Saint Denis for the French.Footnote 90
By 1640, nearly all members of the imperial family left the terrestrial world in Vienna. When Empress Maria Anna died in Linz in May 1646 and Archduke Charles Joseph died in the same place in January 1664, the coffins containing their remains were in both cases transported by black cloth-covered boat down the Danube to the Habsburg capital. At Rossau, on the outskirts of Vienna, crowds of people streamed onto the mourning vessel to bid the late rulers a prayerful farewell. At eight o’clock in the evening, their coffins were transferred to a carriage drawn by two mules with black caparisons. Accompanied by more than 200 riders and 188 carriages, they headed through the Scottish Gate and on to St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. In the center of the church, the coffins were placed on a three-tiered dais, where the bishop of Vienna and the papal nuncio blessed the deceased. The funeral processions then proceeded to the Capuchin church.Footnote 91 A similar procedure was followed in the case of Charles VI, who died on 20 October 1740 in Favorita, a suburb of Vienna. He was transported to the Hofburg on the following day on a stretcher fixed between two mules and by the highest court officials with their valets and thirty members of the monarch’s bodyguard. Then followed the usual funeral festivities, with the three-day display of the body, the funeral procession to the Capuchin church, and the placement of the coffin in the crypt there.Footnote 92
Only three empresses between 1640 and 1740 expressed the wish to be buried outside the Capuchin church. Eleonora Gonzaga, the second wife of Ferdinand II, found her final resting place in the Carmelite Convent in Vienna, whereas Claudia Felicitas of Tyrol, the second wife of Leopold I, was buried in the local Dominican church. Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the husband of Joseph I, opted for the Salesian convent in Vienna, which she had founded.Footnote 93
The form of the mourning ceremonies in Vienna became set during the same time. Beginning with the funeral of Ferdinand II in 1637, it began after dark on the third day after the ruler’s death; as contemporaries reasoned, “in such cases there is a greater effect than during daytime.”Footnote 94 The night represented a transitional moment between the earthly world and the heavens. The light of the torches and lamps carried in the hands of the funeral procession served as a fitting allegory of Jesus Christ’s victory over sin and symbolized his divinity.Footnote 95 At the same time, it illuminated the soul of the deceased on its way to the house of God and protected it from the trappings of darkness. The light was an allegory of eternal life, happiness, and joy and opposed darkness, the symbol of death and misfortune.Footnote 96
On the day of the funeral, about one o’clock in the afternoon, selected court servants and priests gathered in the room with the body of the deceased on display. As soon as the Psalm Miserere mei, Deus had sounded, the leading clergyman, usually the bishop of Vienna, blessed the exposed body, sprinkled it with holy water, and cleansed it with incense. The valets, or in the case of women, the ladies-in-waiting, moved the remains of the deceased into a wooden coffin decorated with gold fittings and inlaid with red velvet. Once the servants had locked the coffin, the keys were handed over to the High Chamberlain. They then placed a cross in the middle of the coffin, an imperial crown with an apple and a scepter at its head, and the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns at the feet.Footnote 97
Around 8 p.m., twelve valets with their faces covered carried the coffin in the presence of members of the imperial family from the Hofburg to the Augustinian Church, where the body was again put on display. After nine o’clock, the bells began to ring in Vienna and its surroundings. From the Augustinian Church, a funeral procession, in which around a thousand people participated, marched toward the Capuchin church.Footnote 98 The crossing between the churches required the construction of a raised wooden bridge, which further emphasized the majesty and authority of the deceased.Footnote 99 Those in the procession carried flaming candlesticks and torches through the darkened metropolis. As an expression of the deceased’s mercy, the residents of Vienna’s hospitals led the procession, followed by members of the religious orders, members of the city council, and representatives of the Lower Austrian estates. They were joined by courtiers, including the Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece, privy councilors, court musicians, members of the cathedral chapter, representatives of the University of Vienna, and twelve prelates led by the bishop of Vienna. Behind them, the twelve valets carried the coffin of the deceased. The coffin was accompanied on both sides by the highest court officials and pages. Behind the coffin walked the papal nuncio together with the male descendants who walked in places of honor, behind whom the female part of the court followed.Footnote 100 The funeral procession was closed by armed imperial guards and city guards.Footnote 101 This arrangement reflected contemporary ideas about the social hierarchy. It was a grand, ritualized event in which all participants publicly expressed their position within the unified Res publica Christiana Habsburgica, headed by the emperor as the highest-ranking ruler in the imaginary hierarchy of Christian rulers.Footnote 102
Religious dignitaries and court officials played a central role in the procession. At the entrance to the Capuchin church, representatives of the order received and carried the coffin to a prearranged platform. Due to the limited space of the church, apart from the clergy, only family members and the highest court dignitaries took part in the ceremony. The bishop of Vienna blessed the coffin while singing the hymn Libera me, Domine. Six brothers of the order then lifted it and carried it to the crypt, accompanied by the Master of the Court and the High Chamberlain. There they placed the coffin in its reserved spot. Then the High Chamberlain took out two gilded keys and ordered it to be opened. Those present were able to see that the coffin did contain the body of the deceased. With this symbolic step, the remains of the deceased were handed over to the care of the Capuchin Guardian. After the coffin had been closed again, and when the chamberlain had entrusted one of the keys to the clergyman and ordered the other to be deposited in the imperial treasury, the ceremony came to an end. As the participants left the Capuchin church, the city guard stood outside its doors with three flaming standards.Footnote 103
Emperors did not attend the funerals of deceased empresses, a tradition not understood by diplomats of Protestant states.Footnote 104 As a rule, on the day of his wife’s death, the Habsburg ruler left the Hofburg with an entourage of servants and headed for one of his country houses in Laxenburg, Schönbrunn, or Wiener Neustadt. Staying in the capital would, it was understood, only deepen the widower’s pain and grief. He returned to the Hofburg after about a month to attend the mourning ceremonies in the Augustinian court church.Footnote 105 The behavior of surviving widows was also peculiar. Eleonora II Gonzaga, by her absence from the burial of Ferdinand III on 6 April 1657, created a pattern of behavior followed by other widowed empresses. Together with her confessor, she remained in one of the chapels of the Hofburg for prayers.Footnote 106 In 1740, Maria Theresa remained absent from the funeral procession of Charles VI. Her advanced pregnancy was an obvious explanation; but the emperor had also expressed a wish before his death that no female member of the ruling family should attend his funeral.Footnote 107
If Habsburg children under the age of twelve died, there was usually no display of their bodies in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The bodies were instead placed in a tin coffin and transported by carriage in silence and without lighting to the Capuchin tomb after dark. An exception came with the death and burial of the seven-month-old Leopold John, son of Charles VI, in November 1716. The embalmed child was dressed in a silver-embroidered dress, placed on a cushion of red damask, and displayed in one of the red-painted anterooms of the Hofburg under a canopy of the same color. A wreath of flowers adorned the child’s head, and around his neck hung a diminutive Order of the Golden Fleece. The flowers served as a visible symbol of purity and innocence. In the evening, a brief viewing of the body took place. An hour before midnight, it was placed in a wooden coffin and transported to the Capuchin church.Footnote 108
According to tradition, the relatives of deceased monarchs held mourning ceremonies in their residences across Europe. Less than a month after the death of Rudolf II in early 1612, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de’ Medici, organized funeral ceremonies in his honor in the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence (Cosimo’s wife was the daughter of Charles of Styria and Mary of Bavaria). These were followed by ceremonies in cities of the Spanish Habsburgs: in Antwerp, in the Cathedral of Our Lady, in Brussels; in the royal chapel in the residence of Archduke Albrecht and his wife Clara Eugenie; and in Madrid in the church of the convent of the barefoot Franciscan nuns Descalzas Reales.Footnote 109 Similarly, in 1619, following the death of Matthias, Archduke Albrecht said goodbye to his older brother in Brussels, King Philip III of Spain in Madrid, and King Louis XIII of France and his wife Anna, of Spanish Habsburg descent, in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. In Florence, Cosimo II de’ Medici held a funeral service for Matthias in the Basilica of San Lorenzo.Footnote 110
Representation of the Imperial Majesty
The funeral festivities in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century did not end with the placement of the coffin in the Capuchin tomb. Court and provincial mourning was also declared, and it lasted fourteen months (of which three months were deep mourning) in the event of the death of the monarch or his family members over the age of twelve. During this period, no public celebrations were allowed that were not connected with liturgical activities. Members of the imperial court dressed in black mourning clothes and rode in black carriages.Footnote 111 Widows of deceased monarchs generally experienced a two-year mourning period, during which they wore only black clothing. Indeed, Eleonora Magdalena of Neuburg and Maria Theresa wore black clothes for the rest of their lives.Footnote 112 Habsburg emperors in contrast mourned their deceased wives for only a year, during which time they refused to remarry. Such practices were broken only in exceptional cases when the succession was threatened by the absence of an heir to the throne, as shown by the actions of Leopold I. Although his first wife, Margaret Therese of Austria, died on 12 March 1673, at the urging of his entourage, the pope, and his sister, the Spanish Queen Maria Anna, he remarried before the traditional annual mourning period had expired. However, the wedding celebrations were much more sober than those of the first marriage.Footnote 113
After the death of the monarch, requiem masses, vigils, and prayers for the deceased were held for several months in churches throughout the Habsburg monarchy and other European cities.Footnote 114 The heir to the throne communicated the news of the monarch’s death in writing to the superiors of the most important monasteries, collegiate churches, and bishoprics, calling on them to hold funeral services for the deceased and to organize masses, solemn processions, and other customary devotions. At the end of the mourning period, they had to submit a detailed report to Vienna on their order and number.Footnote 115 Requiem masses, it was believed, helped the deceased to alleviate his eventual suffering in purgatory.Footnote 116
The main three-day mourning ceremony took place in the Augustinian court church in Vienna. Starting with the death of Ferdinand IV in 1654, it began with an evening vigil in the presence of the ruling family and other distinguished guests within six weeks of the monarch’s death.Footnote 117 The festivities were preceded by time-consuming preparations, especially the construction of a lavish castrum doloris, usually designed by a prominent court architect, with a cenotaph of the deceased and an iconographic program rich in symbols. According to the jurist Julius Bernard von Rohr, by erecting this ephemeral structure in the form of a canopy or small temple, the bereaved showed their special respect and love for the deceased. At the same time, they wanted to evoke deep sorrow and sympathy in the minds of subjects and foreign visitors.Footnote 118
The decoration of the castrum doloris usually featured motifs of death (skulls, skeletons, bats) and the transience of human life (hourglasses), accompanied by elements of posthumous triumph (pyramids, obelisks, triumphal arches), all of which were enhanced by the overall verticality of the building. Chronograms and emblems, consisting of a pictorial icon (an allegorical scene) and a short explanatory text, formed an essential part of the structure.Footnote 119 The castrum doloris celebrated the personality of the deceased and his deeds, integrating them into the history of the Habsburg dynasty and emphasizing the continuity of the family.Footnote 120
Hundreds of burning candles and torches were placed around the structure, their light shining brightly in the gloom of the church. The extraordinary radiance gave the castrum doloris a splendor and grandeur commensurate with the imperial majesty. Their number reflected the social status of the deceased and was mentioned in the descriptions of these ephemeral structures.Footnote 121 In the cult of the deceased, light had a beneficial effect, as it illuminated the soul of the bereaved on its way to the house of God. Indeed, it was understood to be a symbol of divinity and of Jesus Christ himself.Footnote 122
The design of the castrum doloris at the funeral of Maximilian II in St. Vitus Cathedral was reminiscent of a Roman church with Doric columns, a pyramidal roof, and a richly decorated, illuminated vault.Footnote 123 Those built for the last farewell to Charles V in Augsburg and Ferdinand I in Vienna were based on the same elements and probably formed the basic model for its Prague counterpart. The vertical connection of the symbolic axis between the body of the ruler in its coffin on the catafalque above the base and the imperial crown suspended in its illuminated vault between the pyramids atop the columns was greatly strengthened by the brightness caused by the flaming candles, according to the testimony of participants in the ceremony.Footnote 124 The placement of the imperial crown at the imaginary apex of the castrum doloris vault between heaven and Earth affirmed the monarch’s exclusive place at the top of the social hierarchy and extolled the sanctity of his earthly reign. Given the Roman imperial tradition to which the Habsburgs ostentatiously subscribed, the display of the emperor’s body also represented to mourners his pilgrimage to the Olympus of unforgettable glory.Footnote 125
During the mourning ceremonies, several requiem masses were held, and these were celebrated by prominent church leaders, especially bishops and the papal nuncio. Their liturgy had fixed rules. It included a solemn sermon commemorating and celebrating the deceased.Footnote 126 An important place was given to traditional funeral pieces, including the popular Psalm De Profundis, the prayer Inclina aurem tuam, Domine, the Loreto litanies, and the absolutio super tumulum, a petition for the forgiveness of sins.Footnote 127 During the services, court bandmasters played sacred compositions for the deceased. Some Habsburgs also wrote music for these occasions. Leopold I, for example, composed not only a requiem for his late wives Margaret Therese of Austria and Claudia Felicitas of Tyrol, but also a Dies Irae and an offertorium for his uncle, Archduke Leopold William.Footnote 128 After the main funeral ceremony in the Augustinian court church, the mourning celebrations, including the erection of a castrum doloris, moved to other Viennese churches. Similar mourning structures were also built in other cities of the Habsburg monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as in other European capitals.Footnote 129
When a member of the Habsburg family died, papal nuncios and Spanish diplomats reported to their sovereigns on the good and exemplary death of the Catholic ruler. Similarly, the imperial court and other institutions disseminated testimonies in various languages about the display of the body of the deceased, the funeral procession, and the mourning ceremonies through lengthy printed descriptions, often with iconographic accompaniments. For instance, two years after the death of Maria Anna of Bavaria, the first wife of the later Emperor Ferdinand II, Jesuits in Graz published a nearly 300-page book, which included full-page engravings of forty-five emblems from her castrum doloris, along with an extensive commentary.Footnote 130 At other times, the court distributed simple graphic sheets depicting the castrum doloris, including details of the emblems with which it was decorated, and an accompanying commentary interpreting the allegorical images and inscriptions.Footnote 131 Even more common were short leaflets in multiple languages. Funeral sermons appeared in even larger numbers. In 1705, 2,000 copies of the solemn sermon delivered by the Jesuit Ferdinand Widmann for the late Leopold I were sent to all parts of the Habsburg monarchy.Footnote 132
Other publications—printed funeral poems, elegies with engravings, and sermons delivered at requiem masses—celebrated the deceased as triumphant Christian rulers. These literary monuments aimed to honor the memory of the deceased through extensive narration, to shape and disseminate their positive posthumous image, and to preserve it for future generations.Footnote 133 An integral part of such works was the individual glorification of the dead, including reference to their place in the Kingdom of Heaven at the right hand of God, and the portrayal of the religious, political, and social identity of the Habsburgs as an exemplary Catholic dynasty destined for world domination, whose members were exclusively endowed with positive character traits and virtues.Footnote 134 Due to the wide geographical scope and linguistic diversity of such texts, a comprehensive bibliographic inventory is not yet available, and systematic research on them has only begun.Footnote 135
In the case of Maximilian II, both Protestant and Catholic clerics and scholars produced funeral poems.Footnote 136 These portrayed the deceased as a deeply religious Christian ruler who was equally close to Catholics and Protestants, as evidenced by his moves toward religious tolerance in Lower Austria and later by his unsuccessful attempt to have the Bohemian Confession approved in the Kingdom of Bohemia. The celebration of Maximilian’s attitude toward non-Catholics contained in some of these poems provoked irritated reactions, especially from the Holy See and the widowed Empress Mary.Footnote 137 This was especially true of a poem written by the physician Johann Crato of Kraftheim, who stayed at the bedside of the dying emperor until the final moments of his earthly life and captured the dying man’s last words. He is said to have addressed them directly to God without the presence of a confessor.Footnote 138
The deaths of members of the Habsburg dynasty were often commemorated years later. Anna Jagiello was remembered during the ceremonial arrival of her eldest son, the future Maximilian II, in Prague on 28 January 1562, fifteen years after her untimely death.Footnote 139 Her second-born son, Archduke Ferdinand, who served as governor of the Kingdom of Bohemia, drew up a ceremonial program, which was also attended by Emperor Ferdinand I.Footnote 140 The celebration of the memory of the late queen permeated the subsequent chivalric tournaments in Old Town Square in February 1562, at which Archduke Charles, her youngest son, stood out for his valor and fortitude.
On the anniversary of the deaths of members of the Habsburg dynasty, commemorative services were held in Vienna’s churches and chapels. They were regularly preceded by a memorial vigil in the Capuchin church on the eve of these anniversaries.Footnote 141 In the interiors of the churches, castra doloris were again built, as was the case in the Capuchin church in January 1730 on the tenth anniversary of the death of Eleonora Magdalena of Neuburg.Footnote 142 On 12 April 1674, on the other hand, two solemn masses were celebrated in the Hofburg court chapel in the presence of Leopold I and his second wife Claudia Felicitas of Tyrol for Margaret Therese of Austria, the first wife of the emperor, who had died the previous year. The deceased was visibly present through her effigy placed in the chapel with several flaming candles at its sides.Footnote 143
Conclusion
This study has offered a comprehensive look at the rituals connected with the dying, death, and burials of Central European Habsburgs in the early modern period. These rituals served to represent the Catholic faith of the deceased Habsburgs, the extent of their territorial rule, and their political power and dynastic memory, all of which made up the symbolic image of the immortal social body of the deceased ruler. These goals were attained through complex mosaics of symbolic practices that were situationally flexible and increasingly codified over time. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, the bodies of Habsburg emperors were placed in the family tomb in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Archdukes with the rank of rulers of Tyrol had their final resting place in the Silver Chapel of the court church in Innsbruck, and those of Inner and Outer Austria in the Princely Chapel of the Seckau Monastery. After the construction of the Angel’s Crypt in the Capuchin church in Vienna, which was initiated by Anne of Tyrol in 1617, the bodies of deceased Habsburg rulers and their wives were usually placed in the family tomb there. From the middle of the seventeenth century, funeral processions from the Hofburg led through a connecting corridor to the adjacent Augustinian court church, where funeral masses were held. At the end of the procession, the coffins with the remains were taken to the nearby Capuchin church and placed in the Angel Crypt.
Even in the following century, the funerals of the Habsburgs remained strongly traditional, despite the strong influence of the Enlightenment’s efforts to rationalize all areas of life and changes in the ceremonial practices of the imperial court. However, the profane elements gradually began to push the religious component of funerals into the background. The emphasis on imperial representation began to shift from the church ceremonies to the Angel Crypt, which opened to the public during the first half of the eighteenth century. The lavish sarcophagi and rich iconographic decoration reflecting dynastic power and prestige became a permanent monument to the official culture of commemoration of individual family members and of the dynasty as a whole.Footnote 144
Much research remains to be done on the Habsburgs’ death and dying. Scholars have only sporadically touched upon the last moments of empresses, archduchesses, and less important members of the family, including prematurely deceased children. Similarly, research on the financial cost of mourning ceremonies and their impact on the everyday life of Vienna, Prague, Innsbruck, and Graz has remained a marginal concern.Footnote 145 More detailed research will also be required on the symbolic language of letters of condolence, invitations to mourning ceremonies, and polite expressions of refusal to participate. Interdisciplinary research is needed into the musical component of funeral festivities and the comparative study of ephemeral architecture. The same observation applies to the role of surviving funerary literary monuments, especially funeral sermons, and to the detailed analysis of their communication schemes and topoi used in relation to the posthumous representation of the Habsburgs as instruments of political propaganda and the shaping of historical memory. Finally, it will be necessary to examine whether the funerals of Habsburg rulers could serve as places to negotiate dynastic and diplomatic relations in early modern Europe. Interdisciplinary research into these topics will allow comprehensive comparison of the dying, death, and funerals of the Central European Habsburgs with other European ruling dynasties in the early modern period.Footnote 146
