Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor

Let justice be done, though the world perish.

Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor (10 March 1503 – 25 July 1564) reigned as archiduke of Austria from 1521, king of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia from 1526 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1556 till his death.

Quotes

• Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus.
  • Let justice be done, though the world perish.
    • Motto, quoted in Locorum Communium Collectanea (1563), vol. 2, p. 290

Misattributed

• I am the Emperor, and I want dumplings.
  • Ferdinand I of Austria, quoted in The Fall of the House of Habsburg (1963) by Edward Crankshaw

Quotes about

• The sheer heterogeneity and diffusion of these lands, which will be examined further below, might suggest that the Habsburg imperium could never be a real equivalent to the uniform, centralized empires of Asia. Even in the 1520s, Charles was handing over to his younger brother Ferdinand the administration and princely sovereignty of the Austrian hereditary lands, and also of the new acquisitions of Hungary and Bohemia—a recognition, well before Charles’s own abdication, that the Spanish and Austrian inheritances could not be effectively ruled by the same person. Nonetheless, that was not how the other princes and states viewed this mighty agglomeration of Habsburg power. To the Valois kings of France, fresh from consolidating their own authority internally and eager to expand into the rich Italian peninsula, Charles V’s possessions seemed to encircle the French state—and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the chief aim of the French in Europe over the next two centuries would be to break the influence of the Habsburgs. Similarly, the German princes and electors, who had long struggled against the emperor’s having any real authority within Germany itself, could not but be alarmed when they saw Charles V’s position was buttressed by so many additional territories, which might now give him the resources to impose his will. Many of the popes, too, disliked this accumulation of Habsburg power, even if it was often needed to combat the Turks, the Lutherans, and other foes.
  • Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (1987)
• By 1552, French armies had moved into Germany, in support of the Protestant states, who were thereby able to resist the centralizing tendencies of the emperor. This was acknowledged by the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which brought the religious wars in Germany to a temporary end, and by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), which brought the Franco-Spanish conflict to a close. It was also acknowledged, in its way, by Charles V’s own abdications—in 1555 as Holy Roman emperor to his brother Ferdinand I (emperor, 1555–1564), and in 1556 as king of Spain in favor of his son Philip II (1556–1598). If the Austrian and Spanish branches remained closely related after this time, it now was the case (as the historian Mamatey puts it) that “henceforth, like the doubleheaded black eagle in the imperial coat of arms, the Habsburgs had two heads at Vienna and at Madrid, looking east and west.”
  • Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (1987)