Maurice, Elector of Saxony

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Maurice, Elector of Saxony : biography

21 March 1521 – 9 July 1553

In 1552 Maurice with the army of the Holy Roman Empire (11,000 men) marched into Hungary. The Ottomans besieged Eger, but the Black Death broke out in Hungary, and Maurice did not dare to move up his forces.Ágnes Várkonyi: Age of Reforms (Megújulások kora), Magyar Könyvklub, Budapest, 2001. ISBN 963-548-471-2

1521–1541: Infancy and youth

Maurice was the fourth child but first son of the still-Catholic Duke Henry IV and the Protestant Catherine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

In December 1532, Maurice, aged 11, came to live at the castle of his godfather Albert of Brandenburg, cardinal, archbishop of Magdeburg and archbishop of Mainz. For two years, he lived the contemplative life of a cardinal until his uncle, the Duke George, demanded his return to his homeland and began the training of the later Saxonian Duke and educated him as a catholic. After 1536 Maurice’s father was converted to the Protestant faith, the entire Duchy followed him. Henry and Catherine again took the education of their son into their hands. When Maurice was 18 years old, he left his parents and moved to live with his older cousin John Frederick I, who resided in Torgau and was despised by Maurice; this led to a strong hatred between them both. With another cousin, however, the Landgrave Philip I of Hesse, whom he met in Dresden, Maurice struck up a lifelong friendship.

After Maurice came of age, in 1539, his parents began to look for a wife for him. The favorite was Philip’s eldest daughter, Agnes. The marriage plans threatened to fail, however, because of the illegal double marriage of the Landgrave. Without the knowledge of his parents, Maurice remained committed to his engagement with Agnes. The wedding, particularly disapproved of by his mother, took place in Marburg on 9 January 1541. Letters from that time illustrate the strong mutual devotion of the couple. Together they had two children:

  1. Anna (b. Dresden, 23 December 1544 – d. Dresden, 18 December 1577), married on 24 August 1561 to Prince William I of Orange-Nassau. They divorced in 1574
  2. Albert (b. Dresden, 28 November 1545 – d. Dresden, 12 April 1546).

Ancestors

1541–1548: The Wurzener Feud and the Schmalkaldic War

On 18 August 1541 Duke Henry died, and Maurice, as the eldest son, succeeded him as Duke of Saxony and Head of the Albertine Line. He replaced most of his advisors, because they had been opposed to his marriage with Agnes from the very start. George von Carlowitz, one of the new confidants of the Duke, advised Maurice (in order to prevent a war with Emperor Charles V and his brother Ferdinand, at the same time King of the Romans and his neighbour as King of Bohemia) not to endanger the survival of the Protestant Movement.

Thus he participated in the emperor’s army in the war against the forces of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire (1542), Duke William of Jülich-Cleves-Berg (1543), and King Francis I of France (1544). However, on the other hand, the Duke confiscated the properties of the Catholic Church in his lands. From the wealth of dissolved monasteries in his country Maurice founded the princes’ schools (Fürstenschulen) of Schulpforta (100 places), Meissen (60 places) and Grimma (70 places). The legal basis for this was the "New National Order" (Neue Landesordnung) of 1543.

Later, Maurice refused to join the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, although the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, his friend and father-in-law, was its leader. The principal reason for his refusal to do so is generally regarded as his hate for his Ernestine cousin John Frederick I and the Imperial promise of the Saxon electorship, then held by John Frederick. In the Holy Week of 1542, in the process of the Wurzener Feud (Wurzener Fehde) it nearly came to a fratricidal war, because John Frederick occupied the jointly administered "Wurzener Country". There had previously been a controversy between Maurice and John Frederick over the use of tax funds from this area. The intervention of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Martin Luther prevented the war. Due to the energetic persistence of the Elector John Frederick in establishing the Protestant Faith, the Emperor Charles V, on 20 July 1546, imposed the Imperial Ban (Reichsacht) on him, with the agreement of the Catholic Imperial Estates, the enforcement of which was laid on Maurice after the Wurzener Feud. The emperor tried in this way to drive a still deeper wedge into the Protestant camp in order to prevent a further propagation of the Protestant Faith. In the case of a successful enforcement, Maurice hoped to be invested by the emperor with the Electorship. Maurice hesitated for a long time, since by this punitive action his father-in-law Philip of Hesse would have been affected also. But when the brother of the emperor, Ferdinand I, himself wanted to initiate a campaign against the Electorate of Saxony, he had to call it off, in order not to lose the initiative in his own lands to the Habsburgs.