Kinlight · The House of Habsburg

Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress

1528 – 1603 · Generation X · Consort · Austrian Habsburgs

Portrait of Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress

Maria (1528 – 1603). Consort. Married Maximilian in 1548. Daughter of Charles V; married her cousin Maximilian II, uniting the Spanish and Austrian lines. Born in the Alcázar of Madrid to Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, she grew up in Toledo and Valladolid alongside her brother Philip, whose convictions she shared all her life. Soon after the wedding she and Maximilian governed Spain together in Philip’s absence, and from 1550 she held the regency alone until she left in 1551. The couple settled in Vienna in 1552. The marriage was happy, though she, fiercely Catholic, often clashed with her husband over his religious tolerance. Of sixteen children, nine reached adulthood, among them the emperors Rudolf II and Matthias, over whom she kept great influence. Widowed in 1576, she returned to Spain in 1582, glad to live in “a country without heretics,” and ended her days at the convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid. Tomás Luis de Victoria wrote his Requiem for her funeral.

Place in the family

  • Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress was a daughter of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
  • Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress was the second of 3 children of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Isabella of Portugal recorded in this archive.
  • The archive records 39 of her descendants, across 15 generations.

One of 24 people of Austrian Habsburgs (1527–1754) in this archive. The Vienna line, which held the Holy Roman crown almost without a break.

Line of descent: Rudolf I of Germany → Albert I of Germany → Albert II, Duke of Austria → Leopold III, Duke of Austria → Ernest, Duke of Austria → Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor → Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor → Philip I of Castile → Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor → Maria of Austria, Holy Roman Empress.

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Life

  • 1528 — Born
  • 1548 — Married Maximilian
  • 1603 — Died

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