Maximilian played no small part in the intellectual and artistic life of his time. The religious movement which burst out at Wittenberg and Zurich in the last years of his life lay outside his sphere. Though he was wont to discuss theological problems with interest and freedom, he was in his personal life, as in his ecclesiastical policy, orthodox and conservative. Yet this orthodox Emperor discussed the temporal dominion of the Popes as an open question, and argued that the Lenten fast should be divided or mitigated, since the rude German climate made the rigid observance of the laws of the Church dangerous to health. He urged on the Papacy the reformation of the Calendar very much on the lines afterwards adopted by Gregory XIII. He was pious and devout after his fashion, and was specially devoted to the Saints whom he claimed as members of the House of Habsburg. He had also inherited some of his father’s love for astrology. More important, however, than these things is the large share taken by him in the spread of the New Learning of the humanists in Germany. He reorganised the University of Vienna, and established there chairs of Roman law, mathematics, poetry, and rhetoric. He fostered the younger Habsburg university at Freiburg in the Breisgau. Under the direction of Conrad Celtes, he set up a college of poets and mathematicians as a centre for liberal studies in Vienna. He called Italian humanists over the Alps to his service. He was the friend of Pirkheimer, Peutinger and Trithemius. He was devoted to music, and his Court-chapel was famous for its singing. In art he was a most magnificent patron of the wood engraver. He had friendly relations with Durer, while Burgkmaier did some of his best work for him. He loved history, and was a great reader of romances. He regretted that the Germans were not in the habit of writing chronicles, and interested himself in the printing and composition of works illustrating the history of Germany and especially that of his own House. His vanity, perhaps the most constant feature in his character, led him to project a long series of literary and artistic undertakings; but, as was usual with him, his designs were far too comprehensive to be ever carried out. One only of his literary enterprises saw the light during his lifetime. This was The Dangers and Adventures of the famous Hero and Knight, Sir Teuerdank, which Melchior Pfintzing published in 1517 at Nürnberg, and which sets forth in dull and halting German verse, illustrated by Schaufelein’s spirited woodcuts, an allegorical account of Maximilian’s own exploits during the wooing of Mary of Burgundy. What part of the composition belongs to Maximilian himself and what the final redaction owed to the earlier designs of his secretary, Max Treitzsaurwein, and of his faithful counsellor Sigismund von Dietrichstein, is not clear, but at least the general scheme and many of the incidents are due to the Emperor. At his death, he left behind him masses of manuscripts, fragments of proofs, and great collections of drawings and wood-blocks to represent the other compositions which he had contemplated. In comparatively recent times the piety of his descendants has given these works to the world in sumptuous form. WeissTcunig, drawn up by Treitzsaurwein and illustrated by Burgkmaier, describes in German prose the education and the chief exploits of Maximilian. In the Triumph of Maximilian the vast resources of Albert Dürer’s art nobly commemorate the Emperor in one of the most grandiose compositions that the wood-engraver has ever produced. In Freydal Maximilian’s joustings and mummeries are depicted with the help of Burgkmaier’s pencil. Other literary projects, such as the lives of the so-called “Saints of the House of Habsburg,” were only very partially carried out. In the last years of his life Maximilian planned the erection of a splendid tomb for himself at Wiener Neustadt, and called upon the best craftsmen of Tyrol to adorn it with a series of bronze statues. The Austrian lands were not able to supply his wants, and before long he was ransacking Germany for artists capable of carrying out his ideas. To this extension of his plan we owe the magnificent statues of Theodoric and Arthur, which Peter Vischer of Nürnberg cast by his orders. But this scheme too remained incomplete at his death. His last wishes were carried out as imperfectly as he had himself carried out his designs during his life. His request to be buried at Wiener Neustadt, the town of his birth, was forgotten. But, among the ornaments of the sumptuous tomb erected over his remains by his grandsons in the palace chapel at Innsbruck, room was found for the works of art which he himself had collected to adorn his last resting-place. In the heart of his favourite Tyrol, under the shadow of the mountains that he loved, the most glorious monument of the German Renaissance worthily enshrines the prince, who, with all his faults and failures, had no small share in bringing his country into the full blaze of modern light.
Was any real progress achieved by Germany during the reign of Maximilian? The failure both of the Emperor and of the Estates is painfully obvious; yet so much strenuous activity, so much preaching of new political doctrine could not pass away without leaving its mark in history. Very few actual results were at the moment obtained; but the ideal was at least set up, which later generations were able in some slight measure to realise. The policy of imperial reform seemed to have hopelessly broken down; but it was something gained that the Landfriede had been proclaimed, the constitution and powers of the Diet settled, and the Kammergericht established. The next generation took up and made permanent some of the measures which during Maximilian’s lifetime had been utterly abandoned. The division of the Empire into ten Circles was actually carried out. The Aulic Council became the rival of the imperial Chamber. Even the Council of Regency was for a short time revived. In the worst days of disunion these institutions remained, the decrepit survivals of the age of abortive reformation, which with all their feebleness at least faintly embodied the great idea of national union that had originally inspired them. And if all these institutions-such as they were-made for order and progress, the peace and well-being of Germany were much more powerfully secured by the strengthening of the territorial sovereignties which accompanied the reaction from the reformers’“ policy. The example set by Maximilian in unifying and ordering the government of the Austrian dominions was faithfully followed by his vassals, both great and small. The stronger princes become civilised rulers of modern States. The lesser princes at least abandon their ancient policy of warfare and robbery. The improved condition of Germany displays itself most clearly in the extraordinary development of the towns, which Maximilian had himself helped to foster. Thus the population of Nürnberg seems to have doubled during the sixteenth century; while the growth of material comfort, and of a high standard of living, were as marked as was the undoubted advance in spiritual and intellectual interests, in art and in letters. But most important of all was the great fact that the national idea had survived all the many failures of the attempts made to realise it. Nowhere was its force felt more strongly than in Elsass and along the Rhine, where a genuine though mainly literary enthusiasm responded to Maximilian’s efforts at keeping a watch over the national borderlands. And if the age of the collapse of the German State was simultaneously the period of the revival of national scholarship, historical learning, literature, art, and language, it was the national idea that gave unity of direction and aim to the German Renaissance, and inspired all that was best in German Protestantism. To this national idea the Reformation, while completing the political break-up of the German national State, gave new life, endowing Germany with a common language and inspiring her with fresh motives for independence. It was in no small measure due to these influences-the influences of Maximilian’s time and in a measure of Maximilian himself-that in the