from 16 - The empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
adolf of nassau, 1292–1298
rudolf of Habsburg died on 15 July 1291. Long before his death he had tried to win over the electors (who had been responsible for the election of the German king – that is the king of the Romans – since 1257) to the succession of his eldest son, Albert. After the failure of Henry VI’s plans to make the empire a hereditary monarchy on the pattern of France and England, Rudolf could only follow the old practice of having one of his sons crowned king in his own lifetime and thereby secure his succession. Although Pope Honorius IV had supported these plans, they were not to be realised because the death of Honorius postponed Rudolf’s coronation as emperor indefinitely once more and because they were opposed in the electoral college. The situation in itself was not unfavourable for Rudolf in the last years of his reign: the highest ecclesiastical prince in the empire, Archbishop Henry of Mainz, was a confidant of the king’s, Trier was vacant, and the lay electors – the Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg and Bohemia – were related to him by marriage. The archbishop of Cologne, Siegfried II of Westerburg, however, saw a threat to free election by the electors in these plans for contrlling the succession, and he found an ally in King Wenceslas II of Bohemia who, despite Rudolf’s ultimate recognition of his electoral vote, refused to support Albert, since the latter refused to cede Carinthia to him.
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