Whatever was the manner of Philippine’s death, it was bitterly lamented by Ferdinand, who found the usual refuge of human grief in raising a splendid monument to her memory, in the so-called Silberne Kapelle in the Hofkirche. The chapel had been built by him to satisfy her devotion to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and in her lifetime was so called from the solid silver image of the Blessed Virgin, and the bas-reliefs of the mysteries of the rosary in the same metal over the altar, itself a valuable ebony carving. She had loved to pray there, and it accordingly formed a fitting resting-place for her mortal remains. Her effigy in marble over her altar-shaped tomb is a figure of exceeding beauty, and is ascribed to Alexander Collin; it stands under a marble canopy. The upright slab is of white marble, carved in three compartments; the centre one bearing a modest inscription, and the other two, subjects recording her charity to the living and the dead; the outline of the town of Innsbruck, as it appeared in her day, forms the background. By his desire Ferdinand was buried near her; his monument is similarly sunk in the thickness of the wall, which is adorned with shields carved in relief, bearing the arms of his house painted with their respective tinctures; and on the tomb are marble reliefs, setting forth (after the manner of those on Maximilian’s cenotaph) the public acts of his life. This chapel came to be used afterwards for Italian sermons by the consorts of subsequent rulers of Tirol, many of whom were Italians.
In 1572 Innsbruck was visited by a severe shock of earthquake, which overthrew many buildings, and so filled the people with alarm, that temporary wooden huts were built in the open field where they took refuge. Ferdinand and Philippine had recourse to the same means of safety; and while living thus, their only daughter, Anna Eleonora, was born. In thanksgiving for this favour, and for the cessation of the panic, the royal pair vowed a pilgrimage to Seefeld,[5] which they accomplished on foot, accompanied by their sons; above two thousand Innsbruckers following them. The general sentiment of gratitude was further testified by the enactment on the part of Ferdinand, and the glad acceptance on the part of the people, of various rules of devotion, which have gone to form the subsequent habits of the people. Three years of dearth succeeded the earthquake, and were accepted by the pious ruler and people as a heavenly warning to lead them to increased faith and devotion. Many Lutheran books which had escaped earlier measures against them were spontaneously brought forward and burnt; special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was promoted, Ferdinand himself setting the example; for whenever he met the Viaticum on the way to the sick, whether he was in a carriage or on horseback, he never failed to alight and kneel upon the ground, whatever might be its condition. This was indeed a special tradition of his house; it is told of Rudolf of Hapsburg, that one day as he was out hunting, a furious storm came on, soon swelling the mountain torrents and sweeping away paths and bridges. On the brink of a raging stream, which there was no means of crossing, stood a priest, weather-bound on his way to carry the last sacrament to a dying parishioner. Rudolf recognised the sound of the bell, and directed his steps by its leading to pay his homage to the ‘hochwürdigste Gut.’ He no sooner learned the priest’s difficulty than he dismounted, and offered him his own horse. When the priest brought the animal back next day, the pious prince told him he could not think of himself again crossing a horse which had been honoured by having borne his Lord and Redeemer, and begged him to keep it for the future service of religion.
While Philippine’s relations never sought to overstep the limits which imperial etiquette had set them, Ferdinand seems to have treated them with kind cordiality. An instance of this was the magnificence with which he celebrated the marriage of her nephew, Johann von Kolourat, with her maid-of-honour, Katarina von Boimont, in 1580: the ‘Neustadt’ or principal street afforded space for tournaments and races which lasted many days, and attracted the remaining votaries of chivalry from all parts of Europe. The festivities were closed by a splendid pageant, in which Ferdinand took part as ‘Olympian Jove.’
In 1582 Ferdinand married Anna Katharina Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, who was no less pious than Philippine. The marriage was celebrated at Innsbruck with great pomp. She was the first to introduce the Capuchin Order into Germany. Some discussion in the general chapter of the Order preceded the decision which allowed the monks to accept the consequences of being exposed to a colder climate than that to which they had been used. The first stone of their monastery was laid by Ferdinand and Anna Katharina in August 1593, at the intersection of the Universitäts-gasse and the Sill-gasse. Ferdinand died the following year, regretted by all the people, but by none more than by Anna Katharina, who passed the remainder of her days in a convent she had founded at Innsbruck. She died in 1621, and desired the following inscription to be put on her tomb:—‘Miserere mei Domine dum veneris in novissimo die.’
The warning of the disastrous years 1572–4 was further turned to practical account by Ferdinand in his desire to relieve the distress of the peasants. In the first months of threatening famine he bought with his own means large stores of grain in Hungary and Italy, and opened depôts in various parts of Tirol, where it was sold at a reasonable price. To provide a means of earning money for those who were shut out of their ordinary labour, he laid out or improved some of the most important high roads; he likewise exerted himself in every way to promote the commerce of the country. His reign conferred many other benefits on the people. Many laws were amended and brought in conformity with the altered circumstances of the age; the principle of self-taxation was established, and other measures enacted which it does not belong to my present province to particularise. He introduced also the use of the Gregorian Calendar, and gave great encouragement to the cultivation of letters. It was by his care that the most authentic MSS. of the Nibelungen poems and other examples of early literature were preserved to us.
As Ferdinand had no children by Anna Katharina, and those of Philippine were not allowed to succeed,[6] the rule over Tirol went back at his death to the Emperor Rudolf II., Maximilian’s eldest son. In 1602, however, he gave over the government to his brother Maximilian, who is distinguished by the name of the Deutschmeister. Tirol was again fortunate in her ruler; Maximilian was as pious and prudent a prince as his predecessors. He promoted the educational establishments of the town, and was a zealous opponent of religious differences; he brought in the Order of Servites to oppose the remaining germs of Lutheran teaching; the church and monastery at the end of the Neustadt being built for them by Katharina Maria. There are some pictures in the church by Theophilus Polak, Martin Knoller, Grasmair, and other native artists; and the frescoes on the roof by Schöpf are worth attention. A fanatic named Paul Lederer, one of the very few Tirol has produced, rose in this reign, and carried away about thirty persons to join a kind of sect which he attempted to form; in accordance with the laws of the age, he was tried and executed, after which his followers were no more heard of.
Maximilian was much attached to the Capuchins, and built himself a little hermitage within their precincts, which is still shown, where he spent all the time he could spare in prayer and meditation; following the rule of the monks, rising with them to their night Offices, and employing himself at manual labour in the field and in the workshop like one of them. His cell is paneled with plain wood, the bed and chair are of the most ordinary make, as are the ink-stand and other necessary articles, mostly his own handiwork; it has a window high up in the chancel, whence he could assist at the Offices in the church. The Empress Maria Theresa visited it in 1765, and seating herself in the stiff wooden chair, exclaimed, ‘What men our forefathers were!’ Another illustrious pilgrim, whose visit is treasured in the memories of the house, was St. Lorenzo of Brindisi, when on his way to found a house of the Order in Austria. The monks begged of him his Hebrew Bible, his walking-stick, and breviary, which are still treasured as relics. All the churches of Innsbruck and many throughout Tirol felt the benefit of Maximilian’s devotion to the Church. His spirit was emulated by the townspeople, and when the fatal epidemic of 1611 ceased its ravages, the burghers of Innsbruck built the Dreiheiligkeitskirche[7] for the Jesuits, as a thank-offering that the plague was stayed.
The temporal affairs of Tirol received no less attention from Archduke Maximilian than the spiritual. With the foresight of a true statesman, he discovered the coming troubles of the Thirty Years’ War, and resolved that the defences of his country should be in a state to keep the danger at a distance from her borders. The fortified towers, especially those commanding the passes into the country, were all overlooked, and plans of them carefully prepared, all the fortifications being put in repair. The Landwehr, the living bulwarks, the ready defenders of their beloved mountain Vaterland, attracted his still more special attention, and he furnished them with a regulation suited to the needs of the times. He settled also several outstanding disputes with the Venetians, with Count Arco, and with neighbours over the north and west frontiers; and an internal boundary quarrel between the Bishops of Brixen and Trent. The death of Rudolf II., in 1612, had invested him with supreme authority over the country, and simplified his action in all these matters for the benefit of the commonwealth.
Another outburst of pestilence occurred in 1611; the old Siechen-haus was not big enough for all the sick, and had no church attached to it. Two Jesuits—the professor of theology at their university, and Kaspar von Köstlan, a native of Brixen—assisted by a lay-brother, devoted themselves to the service of the sick; their example so edified the Innsbruckers, that in their admiration they readily provided the means, at their exhortation, to build a church. Hanns Zimmermann, Dean of the Burgomasters, bound himself by a vow to see to the erection of the building, and from that time it was observed the fury of the pestilence began to diminish. Maximilian bought the neighbouring house and appointed it for the residence of the chaplain of the Siechen-haus and the doctors. He gave also the altarpiece by Stötzl, representing the three Pestschutzheiligen,[8] and another quaint and curious picture of the plague-genius.
Maximilian died in 1618, and a religious vow having kept him unmarried, the government was transferred to Leopold V., Archduke of Styria, again a most exemplary man. His father was Charles II., son of the Emperor Ferdinand I.; he had originally been devoted to the ecclesiastical state, and nominated Bishop of Strasburg and Passau; but out of regard for the exigencies of the country a dispensation, of which I think history affords only two or three other examples, was granted him from Rome. He married the celebrated Claudia de’ Medici, Duchess of Urbino. Though also Governor of the Low Countries, he by no means neglected the affairs of Tirol. Some fresh attempts of Lutherans to interfere with its religious unity, as well as to foment political dissensions, were put down with a resolute hand. Friedrich von Tiefenbach, sometime notorious as a politico-religious leader in Moravia, was discovered in a hiding-place he had selected, in the wild caves at Pfäffers[9] below Chur, and tried and beheaded at Innsbruck in 1621. The selection of Innsbruck for the marriage of the Emperor Ferdinand II. with his second wife Eleonora, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, in 1622, revived the splendours of Maximilian’s reign, for the Emperor stayed there some weeks with all his court; the Landwehr turned out three thousand strong to form his guard of honour. It was the depth of winter, but the bride braved the snow; the Count of Harrach was sent out to meet her on the Brenner Pass with six gilt sledges, and a vast concourse of people. It is recorded that the Emperor wore on the occasion an entirely white suit embroidered with gold and pearls, on his shoulders a short sky-blue cloak lined with cloth of gold, and a diamond chain round his neck. Eleonora, more in accordance with the season, wore a tight-fitting dress of carnation satin embroidered in gold, over it a sable jacket, and a hat with a plume of eagles’ feathers. The banquet was entirely served by young Tirolean nobles. The Emperor’s present to his bride was a pearl parure, costing thirty thousand ducats; and that of the town of Innsbruck a purse of eighteen thousand ducats. Leopold was confirmed by his imperial brother in the government on this occasion. His own marriage was celebrated with scarcely less state than the Emperor’s in April 1626, an array of handsome tents being pitched in the meadows of Wilten, where the Landesschützen performed many marksmen’s feats for the diversion of the company assembled for the ceremonial. This included the Archbishop of Salzburg, who officiated in the Church function, one hundred and fifty counts and barons, and three hundred of noble blood. The visit of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1628, and of Ferdinand, King of Hungary and Bohemia, in 1629, were other notable occasions of rejoicing for Innsbruck.