Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

“ Sigismund died in December 1437, leaving his two kingdoms to his son-in-law, who was crowned king of Hungary in January 1438 and king of Bohemia in the following June. Albert was also chosen and crowned German king in succession to Sigismund, thus beginning the long and uninterrupted connexion of his family with the imperial throne, a connexion which lasted until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. He did not, however, enjoy his new dignities for long, as he died in October 1439 while engaged in a struggle with the Turks. ”

“ Towards the end of October, Sigismund of Bohemia, king of Hungary, Croatia and [Pg 74] Dalmatia, a valiant man at arms, and a catholic, came with his queen, the daughter of count Cilley, a Sclavonian, and a grand retinue, to Aix la Chapelle [12] . Sigismund was first raised by the electors to be king of the Romans, and then emperor of Germany. On the eighth day of November, he was consecrated and crowned emperor, by the archbishop of Cologne, in the church of our Lady at Aix la Chapelle, as is customary; after which ceremony, he was to be confirmed in his dignity by the pope of Rome. ”

“ Sigismund, emperor of Germany, son of the Emperor Charles IV., was markgrave of Brandenburg, king of Hungary, and palatine of the Rhine; struggled hard to suppress the Hussites; held the Council of Constance, and gave Huss (q. v.) a safe-conduct to his doom; he is the “Super Grammaticam” of Carlyle's “Frederick” (1362-1437) .
Sigismund is the name of three kings of Poland, the last of whom died in 1632.
Signorelli, Luca, the precursor of Michael Angelo in Italian art, born at Cortona ”

“ Sigismund was now thoroughly inflamed against Hus. He had belittled the protection which Sigismund had offered him, and had declared that his friends could protect him against the Emperor; he had quoted a Scriptural instance of the deposition of kings; and, above all, he had disputed Sigismund’s authority over the Latin language. Such a man could not be suffered to live; and the Emperor now declared that he delivered him over to the Council to be burnt, if they so pleased; adding further, that no recantation was to be trusted. He also implied that the death of Jerom must follow that of Hus. ”

“ But though Sigismund consented to sacrifice a defenceless individual to the religious zeal, or to the crooked policy of the pontifical court, he entertained designs by no means friendly to the interests of John XXII. As the jealous suspicion of the partizans of the pontiff had foreseen, the emperor, with the concurrence of the council, proposed to his holiness, that, in order to put an end to the schism, he should solemnly engage to resign the tiara, in case his competitors, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII. could be persuaded to concur with him, by taking a similar step. ”

“ No sooner did the emperor's ship cast anchor, than Sigismund saw the Duke of Gloucester and several noblemen ride into the water with drawn swords, and demand to know whether in coming thus, he designed to exercise or claim any authority in England. On Sigismund replying in the negative, this hostile reception immediately gave way to one of courtesy and honour. Besides his main object, the settlement of the papal schism, Sigismund was also anxious to effect a peace between the kings of England and France ”

“ Sigismund, emperor of Austria.—Sir W. Scott, Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.) .
Sigismunda, daughter of Siffrēdi, lord high chancellor of Sicily, and betrothed to Count Tancred. When King Roger died, he left the crown of Sicily to Tancred, on condition that he married Constantia, by which means the rival lines would be united, and the country saved from civil war. Tancred gave a tacit consent, intending to obtain a dispensation; but Sigismunda, in a moment of wounded pride, consented to marry Earl Osmond. ”

“ The Hussites marched northward to the Baltic, and eastward into Hungary, burning, slaying and plundering as they went. Even the Pope now yielded, and the Hussites were invited to attend the Council at Basel, with the most solemn stipulations in regard to personal safety and a fair discussion of their demands. Sigismund, in the meantime, had gone to Italy and been crowned Emperor in Rome, on condition of showing himself publicly as a personal servant of the Pope. He spent nearly two years in Italy, leading an idle and immoral life, and went back to Germany when his money was exhausted. ”

“ Howbeit his Majesty had by this time come to another mind; nay, Queen Barbara left him less peace than even the court-folks, for indeed her father, Count Cilly, was near of kin to the Perenys, and through them to the Welemisl.
The Emperor Sigismund was a noble-minded and easy-living prince, who once, when forty thousand ducats had been poured into his ever-empty treasure chest, divided it forthwith among his friends, saying: "Now shall I sleep well, for that which broke my rest you bear away with you." ”

“ But Sigismund had been hard pressed by Huss's enemies, who told him that a [Pg 261] promise made to one who is wrong in the faith is not to be kept; and the emperor had weakly and treacherously yielded, so that he could only blush for shame when Huss reminded him of the safe-conduct. ”

“ Though he was a man of honour, and his conscience long remained ill at ease on the subject, Sigismund was a devout Churchman; and if ever superstition can be pleaded in palliation of a breach of the moral law, surely it can be pleaded on behalf of one who yields to the express commands of an authority which he believes to be infallible. That faith must not be kept with heretics to the prejudice of the Catholic faith, was and is as much a doctrine of the Roman Church [1] as the doctrine of Transubstantiation or of the Immaculate Conception. ”

“ If He is not pleased to save me, my life is but a small matter; only let us not allow the gospel to be exposed to the derision of the wicked, and let us shed our blood for it sooner than permit them to triumph. Whether would my life or my death contribute most to the general safety? It is not for us to decide. Let us only pray to God that our young emperor may not commence his reign with dipping his hands in my blood; I would far rather perish by the sword of the Romans. You know what judgments befel the emperor Sigismund after the murder of John Huss. ”

“ Why should a Roman priest support the claim of a prince to the throne of a country devoted to the Greek faith?
At last all was clear indeed to Boris. Rome was at the bottom of this business, whose true aim was the Romanization of Russia; and Sigismund had fetched Rome into it, had set Rome on. Himself an elected King of Poland, Sigismund may have seen in the ambitious son of Stephen Bathory one who might perhaps supplant him on the Polish throne. To divert his ambition into another channel he had fathered—if he had not invented—this fiction that the pretender was the dead Demetrius. ”

“ It might be cowered into silence, but it still grew in vigor, became more impatient as the pope became more despotic, and bolder as it became more conscious of its numerical strength. This spirit, in 1411, when Sigismund became Emperor of Germany, displayed an energy prophetic of stirring events and important consequences. The spirit of Germanic individualism led distinguished men of the nation to deny, with emphatic boldness, the pretensions of the pope; to denounce the profligacy of the clergy; and to demand in the body and head of the church a thorough reformation. ”

“ Toward the end of the year 1847, and about a year after the birth of his second son, Sigismund returned to Rome, and was consequently an eye-witness of the political scenes occurring during 1848 in the capital of the world. His religious feelings were always deep, and it was most natural that during his sojourn in Rome, a man of his character and antecedents should become through conviction an ardent champion of the Catholic Church. ”

“ No exertion was spared to bring this monarch to a favourable decision, and at the same time to facilitate the execution of it. Charnasse, an unsuspected agent of the Cardinal, proceeded to Polish Prussia, where Gustavus Adolphus was conducting the war against Sigismund, and alternately visited these princes, in order to persuade them to a truce or peace. Gustavus had been long inclined to it, and the French minister succeeded at last in opening the eyes of Sigismund to his true interests, and to the deceitful policy of the Emperor. ”

“ IV. All mortal sins, and in particular all public and other disorders, which are contrary to God’s law shall in every rank of life be duly and judiciously prohibited and destroyed by those whose office it is.
These articles, which contain the essence of the Hussite doctrine, were rejected by Sigismund, mainly through the influence of the papal legates, who considered them prejudicial to the authority of the Roman see. Hostilities therefore continued. Though Sigismund had retired from Prague, the castles of Vyšehrad and Hradčany remained in possession of his troops. ”

“ Maximilian of Bavaria, brought up under the teaching of the Jesuits, was a fervent missionary wielding the powers of a prince. The Emperor Ferdinand the Second deliberately put his throne to hazard over and over again, rather than make the smallest concession to the spirit of religious innovation. Sigismund of Sweden lost a crown which he might have preserved if he would have renounced the Catholic faith. In short, everywhere on the Protestant side we see languor; everywhere on the Catholic side we see ardor and devotion. ”

“ But though much of the success of the Utraquist wars was due to the energy of Z̆iz̆ka and his followers, the leading citizens of Prague had also a very important influence on the struggle; and Sigismund’s actions soon roused in them that desperate courage which had seemed for a moment to forsake them. The nickname of Sigismund, “Super Grammaticam,” has been fixed on this Emperor by Carlyle; but an even more distinctive name would have been Sigismund “Super Veritatem.” Many other rulers have told lies in their time of emergency ”

“ It is to be regretted that the drawings and the narrative have never been published together. They are certainly a most interesting product of the art and literature of the middle ages, exhibiting our earl as the mirror of courtesy and refinement in many things of which we have not taken notice; among others, his declining to be the bearer of the Emperor Sigismund's precious gift to Henry V — the heart of St. George — when he knew that the emperor intended to come to England himself, suggesting that it would be more acceptable to his master if presented by the emperor in person. ”

“ We Sigismund by the grace of God emperor of Rome, king of Hungary, Bohemia, &c. unto all true and loyal subjects, noble soldiers, commanders, castellans, open districts, free towns and their judges in our kingdom established and under our sovereignty, kind greetings. Our faithful voivode of the Tsigani with others belonging to him has humbly requested us that we might graciously grant them our abundant favour. We grant them their supplication, we have vouchsafed unto them this liberty. ”

“ Sigismund sent an embassy to Bajazet calling upon him to surrender these cities to their rightful owner. The sultan received the embassy at Brussa, and, conducting them into a hall ornamented with arms and weapons of every description, he pointed at these, saying: “Go back and tell your king that, as you183 see for yourself, I have a good enough title to these lands.” Sigismund rightly understood this to be a declaration of war. He at once summoned the chivalry of Europe to take part in a crusade against the infidels, and entered into an alliance with Manuel II., the Emperor of the East. ”

“ Sigismund, son of King Gundibald, built a stone church on the site, it took the place of an earlier wooden church, constructed on Roman foundations, all three layers being clearly visible at the present day. We know that St Avitus, archbishop of Vienne (d. 518) , preached a sermon (preserved to us) at the dedication of a church at Geneva which had been built on the site of one burnt by the enemy, and the bits of half-burnt wood found in the second of the two layers mentioned above, seem to make it probable that the reference is to Sigismund’s church. ”

“ The patriarchs of Jerusalem, Constantinople and Aquileia, the Grand-Masters of the knightly Orders, thirty-three Cardinals, twenty Archbishops, two hundred Bishops and many thousand priests and monks, were present. Then came the Emperor Sigismund, the representatives of all Christian powers, including the Byzantine Emperor, and even an envoy from the Turkish Sultan, with sixteen hundred princes and their followers. ”

“ The events of that day, said the preacher, would win for Sigismund immortal glory.‘O King, a glorious triumph is awaiting you; to thee is due the everlasting crown and a victory to be sung through all time, for thou hast bound up the bleeding Church, removed a persistent schism, and uprooted the heretics. Do you not see how lasting will be your fame and glory? For what can be more acceptable to God than to uproot a schism and destroy the errors among the flock.’
But the day was not altogether without its stings for Sigismund. Hus, when he spoke, was not slow to remind him of his safe-conduct. ”

“ July 12, Pope Martin V, conceiving that Sigismund would very shortly bring the war which he was then waging against the Hussites in Bohemia to an end, in a bull dated Florence calls upon all Kings, Prelates, Lords, and people, adjuring them most solemnly, by the shedding of Christ's blood, to join Sigismund, and under his (p. 313) standard to invade the lands of the Turks, and to exterminate them. He urges the formation of one grand general army, and for all true men to take the cross ”