Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sigismund, aged approximately 50, depicted by unknown artist in the 1420s — the only contemporary portrait. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum.

For other nobles of the same name, please see Sigismund.

Sigismund (14/15 February, 1368 – December 9, 1437) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1433 until his death. Like many other rulers of his era, he held a number of other titles. These included:

• Margrave of Brandenburg (1378–88 and 1411–15)
• King of Hungary from 1387
• King of the Romans (1410–33)
• King of Bohemia (titulary from 1419, de facto from 1437)

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Born in Nuremberg, Sigismund was a son of the emperor Charles IV and Elizabeth of Pomerania, daughter of Boguslaw V of Pomerania. In 1374 was betrothed to Mary, eldest surviving daughter of king Louis I of Poland and Hungary, who intended Mary to succeed him in the hereditary kingdom of Poland with her future husband as was the custom of the time. Sigismund became margrave of Brandenburg on his father's death in 1378. Sent to the Hungarian court, Sigismund became thoroughly Magyarized and entirely devoted to his adopted country.

In 1381, the then 13-year-old Sigismund was sent to Krakow by his eldest brother and guardian king Venceslaus IV of Bohemia, to learn Polish and to become acquainted with the land and its people. King Venceslaus also gave him Neumark to facilitate communication between Brandenburg and Poland.

Because of his intrigues, Sigismund was expelled from Poland, which was then given to Mary's younger sister Jadwiga I of Poland, who married Jogaila of Lithuania. When an opposing candidate for the Árpád throne appeared, Sigismund fled, leaving his wife Mary and her mother, widow of King Louis, Elisabeth of Bosnia (Elizabeta Kotromanić) at the mercy of conspirators. Years of civil war followed.

[edit] King of Hungary

At the death of her father in 1382, his beþroted Mary became Queen of Hungary, and Sigismund married her in 1385. She was however captured by the rebellious Horvathys in the following year (probably instigated by Sigismund himself), together with his mother-in-law, who was killed in January 1387. Mary was only rescued with the aid of the Venetians in June 1387. Mary never forgave him for the death of her beloved mother, and subsequently they lived separate lives and had separate households. She died in 1395 in a suspicious horse accident while heavily pregnant.

In the meantime, Sigismund had arranged his own coronation as king of Hungary on 31 March 1387, and having raised money by pledging Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst, margrave of Moravia (1388), he was engaged for the next nine years in a ceaseless struggle for the possession of this unstable throne. The bulk of the nation headed by the great Garay family was with him; but in the southern provinces between the Save and the Drave, the Horvathys with the support of the Bosnian king Tvrtko I, Mary's maternal uncle, proclaimed as their king Ladislas, king of Naples, son of the murdered Hungarian king, Charles II. Not until 1395 did Miklos Garay succeed in suppressing them. On a number of occasions, Sigismund was imprisoned by nobles, but skilfully bribed his way out.

In 1396 Sigismund led the combined armies of Christendom against the Turks, who had taken advantage of the temporary helplessness of Hungary to extend their dominion to the banks of the Danube. This crusade, preached by Pope Boniface IX, was very popular in Hungary. The nobles flocked in thousands to the royal standard, and were reinforced by volunteers from nearly every part of Europe, the most important contingent being that of the French led by John, duke of Nevers, son of Philip II, duke of Burgundy. Sigismund set out with 90,000 men and a flotilla of 70 galleys. After capturing Widdin, he sat down before the fortress of Nicopolis, to retain which Sultan Bayezid I raised the siege of Constantinople and at the head of 140,000 men^{[citation needed]} completely overthrew the Christian forces in a battle fought between 25 and 28 September 1396.

Deprived of his authority in Hungary, Sigismund then turned his attention to securing the succession in Germany and Bohemia, and was recognized by his childless step-brother Wenceslaus IV as vicar-general of the whole empire. He was unable to support Wenceslaus when he was deposed in 1400 and Rupert III, elector Palatine of the Rhine, was elected German king in his stead.

During these years he was also involved in domestic difficulties out of which sprang a second war with Ladislas of Naples; and on his return to Hungary in 1401 he was once imprisoned and twice deposed. This struggle in its turn led to a war with the Republic of Venice, as Ladislas before departing to his own land had sold the Dalmatian cities to the Venetians for 100,000 ducats. In 1401 Sigismund assisted a rising against Wenceslaus, during the course of which the German and Bohemian king was made a prisoner, and Sigismund ruled Bohemia for nineteen months. He released Wenceslas in 1403.

In 1404 he introduced the placetum regium. According to this decree papal bulls couldn't be pronounced in Hungary without the consent of the king.

In about 1406 he remarried Mary's cousin Barbara of Celje (Barbara Celjska, nicknamed the "Messalina of Germany"), daughter of Hermann II of Celje. Hermann's mother Katarina Kotromanić and Mary's mother Queen Elizabeta were sisters, or cousins who were adopted sisters. Tvrtko I was their first cousin and adopted brother, perhaps became even an heir apparent to Queen Mary. Tvrtko may have been murdered in 1391 on Sigismund's order.

Sigismund personally lead an army of almost 50,000 "crusaders" against the Croats and Bosnians, which culminated in 1408 with the Battle of Dobor, and a massacre of about 200 noble families, many of them victors of numerous battles against the Ottomans. He founded the Order of the Dragon after this victory. Members of the order were mostly his political allies and supporters.

[edit] Holy Roman Emperor

In 1410 the German king Rupert died, when Sigismund, ignoring his step-brother's title, was chosen German king, or king of the Romans, first by three of the electors on 10 September 1410, and again on 21 July 1411, after the death of Jobst of Moravia, who had been elected in a rival council; but his coronation was deferred until 8 November 1414, when it took place at Aix-la-Chapelle.

On a number of occasions, and in 1410 in particular, Sigismund allied himself with the Teutonic Knights against Jogaila of Poland. However, he was opposed by most of his noblemen and was prevented to participate in the alliance of 22 Western States against Poland in the decisive Battle of Grünwald in July of that year.

Sigismund and Barbara of Celje at the Council of Constance.

[edit] Council of Constance

In 1412–23 he campaigned against the Venetians in Italy. The king took advantage of the difficulties of Antipope John XXIII to obtain a promise that a council should be called to Constance in 1414 to settle the Western Schism. He took a leading part in the deliberations of this assembly, and during the sittings made a journey into France, England and Burgundy in a vain attempt to secure the abdication of the three rival popes. The council ended in 1418, solving the Schism and — of great consequence to Sigismund's future career — having the Czech religious reformer, Jan Hus, burned at the stake for heresy in July 1415. The complicity of Sigismund in the death of Hus is a matter of controversy. He had granted him a safe-conduct and protested against his imprisonment; and the reformer was burned during his absence.

It was also at this Council that a cardinal ventured to correct Sigismund’s Latin, to which Sigismund famously replied:

According to The Nuttall Encyclopaedia, this reply caused him to receive the nickname "Super-Grammaticam".

An alliance with England against France, and an attempt to secure peace in Germany by a league of the towns, which failed owing to the hostility of the princes, were his main acts of these years. Also, Sigismund granted control of the Margrave of Brandenburg (which he had received back after Jobst's death) to Frederick I of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg (1415). This step made the Hohenzollern family one of the most important in Germany.

Non contemporary portrait by Albrecht Dürer.

[edit] Hussite Wars

In 1419 the death of Wenceslaus IV left Sigismund titular king of Bohemia, but he had to wait for seventeen years before the Czechs would acknowledge him. But although the two dignities of king of the Romans and king of Bohemia added considerably to his importance, and indeed made him the nominal head of Christendom, they conferred no increase of power and financially embarrassed him. It was only as king of Hungary that he had succeeded in establishing his authority and in doing anything for the order and good government of the land. Entrusting the government of Bohemia to Sophia, the widow of Wenceslaus, he hastened into Hungary.

The Bohemians, who distrusted him as the betrayer of Hus, were soon in arms; and the flame was fanned when Sigismund declared his intention of prosecuting the war against heretics. Three campaigns against the Hussites ended in disaster. The Turks were again attacking Hungary. The king, unable to obtain support from the German princes, was powerless in Bohemia. His attempts at the diet of Nuremberg in 1422 to raise a mercenary army were foiled by the resistance of the towns; and in 1424 the electors, among whom was Sigismund's former ally, Frederick I of Hohenzollern, sought to strengthen their own authority at the expense of the king. Although the scheme failed, the danger to Germany from the Hussites led to the Union of Bingen, which virtually deprived Sigismund of the leadership of the war and the headship of Germany.

In 1428 he led another campaign agains the Turks, but again with few results. In 1431 he went to Milan where on 25 November he received the Iron crown; after which he remained for some time at Siena, negotiating for his coronation as emperor and for the recognition of the Council of Basel by Pope Eugenius IV. He was crowned emperor at Rome on 31 May 1433, and after obtaining his demands from the Pope returned to Bohemia, where he was recognized as king in 1436, though his power was little more than nominal.

He died in December 1437 at Znaim, and was buried at Grosswardein. By his second wife, Barbara of Cilli, he left an only daughter, Elisabeth, who was married to Albert V, duke of Austria (later German king as Albert II) whom Sigismund named as his successor. As he left no sons the house of Luxembourg became extinct on his death.

[edit] Names in other languages

• German: Sigismund
• Hungarian: Zsigmond
• Czech: Zikmund
• Slovak, Croatian and Serbian: Žigmund
• Slovene: Sigismund Luksemburški

[edit] Ancestors

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• H. Horváth: Zsigmond király és kora (English: King Sigismund and his age; Budapest, 1937)
• B. Kéry: Kaiser Sigismund Ikonographie (Vienna and Munich, 1972)
• E. Mályusz: Zsigmond király uralma Magyarországon, 1387–1437 (English: King Sigismund’s reign in Hungary, 1387–1437; Budapest, 1984)
• E. Marosi (ed), Művészet Zsigmond király korában, 1387–1437 (English: Art in the age of King Sigismund, 1387–1437, 2 vols, exh. cat.; Budapest, Hist. Mus., 1987)
• J. Hoensch, Kaiser Sigismund: Herrscher an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit, 1368–1437 (Munich, 1996)
• M. Pauly und F. Reinert, eds.: "Sigismund von Luxemburg: ein Kaiser in Europa". Tagungsband des internationalen historischen und kunsthistorischen Kongresses in Luxemburg, 8 June to 10 June 2005 (Mainz, 2006)
• I. Takacs: Sigismundus rex et imperator: Kunst und Kultur zur Zeit Sigismunds von Luxemburg 1387–1437 (English: Sigismund, king and emperor: Art and culture in the age of Sigisumd of Luxembourg 1387–1437; exh. cat.; Mainz, 2006)