The World Inside of Rudolf II's Cabinet of Curiosities

Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was an obsessive collector — of art, of rare and expensive artifacts, of scientific equipment, of natural curiosities. (He claimed he had a siren's jaw and a phoenix feather.) But religious tension and foreign invasion was tearing his empire apart at the seams, and Rudolf's response was to retreat further into his own private world.

Support Noble Blood:
— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon
— Merch!
— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener Discretion advised. If you
were a time traveler arriving at Prague Castle at the
start of the sixteen hundreds, you would find yourself at

(00:24):
the epicenter of the Holy Roman Empire, a hub of
culture where scholars, scientists, artists, diplomats and religious officials milled
and mingled in the castle's grand corridors. But few of
those illustrious visitors would have had the privilege of visiting

(00:45):
the most private and opulent chambers in the castle, the
personal domain of the Emperor Rudolf the Second of Habsburg.
Rudolph was an accomplished, even obsessive collector, and his private
chambers housed the paintings, sculptures, and other treasures he had

(01:08):
gathered over the course of his reign. This section of
the palace was known as the Kunstkamer, which translates to
cabinet of curiosities. That said, Rudolph's Kunstkamer was no mere cabinet.
The collection took up an entire wing of the castle.

(01:29):
The existence of the Kunstkamer itself was not a secret
Rudolf's political advisers were familiar with the emperor's collection hobby
as an annoying distraction from his more important task of
ruling the Holy Roman Empire. But no matter how much
his advisers protested, Rudolf poured more and more of his

(01:53):
time and energy into the Kunstkamer, meeting with artists that
could contribute to his collection, sending diplomats across the world
to bring back treasures, and wandering through the rooms to
gaze at his most prized possessions. But while everyone in
court had heard about the Kunstkamer, only a select few

(02:17):
had actually seen what was inside. If you were a
high level dignitary Rudolph wanted to impress, he might have
escorted you into the chamber and showed off the collection
to you himself. You could have also tried to bribe
Rudolph by bringing him an especially rare painting or sculpture,

(02:37):
hoping that it might earn you an hour or two inside.
If you were feeling especially brave, you could have tried
to sneak in. One merchant pulled that off. He arrived
at the castle to visit his friend, a painter that
Rudolf had employed. The painter managed to bring the merchant

(02:58):
into the Kunstkammer in secret while Rudolph was eating. In
any case, if you were lucky enough to see the Kunstkamer,
you'd be led through a narrow corridor tucked between a
study and a courtyard, up a set of stairs. Upon
entering the main chamber, you'd encounter a large, green table

(03:20):
covered with well stuff, globes, clocks, caskets, strange musical instruments.
At the head of the table you would see a
peacock automaton that operated by clockwork. It could walk, squawk,
and wave its tail, which was made out of actual

(03:40):
peacock feathers. Surrounding the table on all sides was a
variety of paintings, statues, clocks, goblets, and more. Some of
the items were free standing on the floor, others were
perched on writing desks, chests, or cabinets made of ebony
and marble. A unicorn horn, which was most likely a

(04:05):
narwhale tusk, lay on a green writing desk off to
the side of the chamber, while a bust of Rudolph
himself sat on a case pushed up against a wall.
If you opened up these chests, and cabinets, you would
find even more treasures. One small gray writing desk contained

(04:27):
forty eight rings, shells, spoons, and various pieces of coral.
Another case was filled with one hundred and five knives
and daggers, one of which was rumored to be the
very weapon that killed Julius Caesar. The Kunstcomer was so

(04:47):
vast and chaotic that an archivist started compiling an inventory
of the space in sixteen o seven and wouldn't finish
until four years later, just before Rudolph would die. It wasn't,
and still isn't clear how the collection was organized. It's

(05:10):
even less clear why Rudolf the second was so consumed
with collecting all of these objects in the first place.
On one hand, the Kunstkamer was an artistic and scientific achievement,
which reflected Rudolph's commitment to expanding the frontiers of human knowledge.

(05:31):
Rudolph was the patron of many artists and scientists, some
of whose work ran up against the worldview of the
Catholic Church. The Church's attempt to stem the spread of
Protestantism and protect their faith often meant punishing individuals whose
ideas challenged it. Rudolf hoped his objects might become a

(05:54):
universal encyclopedia of nature, which could lead to scientific breakthroughs,
even if those discoveries didn't happen during his lifetime. His
collection and patronage laid the groundwork for further scientific exploration
that would continue long after his death. But at the

(06:16):
same time, the Kunstkammer reflected Rudolph's paranoia and gullibility. Throughout
his life, Rudolf suffered from what we now might call depression.
When his mental health worsened, Rudolf would spend months nearly
catatonic with despair, Unable to engage in official business. He

(06:39):
had a persistent fear of assassination, and so he avoided
people altogether, even his closest advisors. He spent all of
his time alone in his Kunstkammer, the only place he
felt truly safe. In the face of increasing uncertainty, anxiety,

(06:59):
and hopelessness, Rudolph developed an obsession with alchemy and magic.
He fixated on finding the Philosopher's Stone, which would give
him eternal life and assuage his fears about an untimely death.
Once and for all. That interest manifested in the Kunstkammer,
as well. It contained magical objects like the aforementioned unicorn horn.

(07:26):
Towards the end of Rudolph's life, he started casting spells
and even conducting sex rituals in the secret chambers. The
question of how to understand the Kunstkamer and its Emperor
has vexed scholars for centuries. During his lifetime, Rudolph the

(07:46):
Second was known by two very different nicknames that represent
his diametrically opposed qualities. He was known as the Great
Master of Prague and the Recluse of Prague. Which one
was he the Great Master, a wise tolerant leader who

(08:06):
championed intellectual freedom, or the Recluse, debilitated by anxiety and
depression and led astray by the fruitlessness of his quest
for eternal life. These are the questions we can't find
answers to in a cabinet of curiosities, no matter how vast.

(08:30):
I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. Rudolph the
Second was not the first Habsburg with an extensive art collection.
His paternal grandfather, Ferdinand the First had one too, in
Ambress Castle in Austria, where he Ferdinand stored his fragments

(08:53):
from classical coins, statues, rare books, paintings and jewels. Rudolph's father,
Maximilian the Second, inherited Ferdinand's passion for art collection and philosophy.
While Maximilian never had a Kunstkammer of his own, he
did build a number of royal gardens in Vienna and

(09:15):
Prague that displayed exotic plants and animals like lions, tigers, bears,
oh mai, and parrots which Renaissance Europeans called Indian crows. Maximilian,
Rudolph's father was also the first to catalog and organize
the Hebsburg holdings of books, which became the Austrian National

(09:39):
Library that still exists to this day. In fifteen twenty two,
Rudolph the second was born. He was Maximilian's oldest son,
and he grew up in Vienna into a freethinking scholarly environment.
Maximilian attracted some of the greatest humanist, philosoph and scientists

(10:01):
in Western Europe to his castle in Vienna, and some
of them became Rudolph's earliest tutors. Rudolf spent his childhood
listening in on cutting edge scholarly conversations about neoplatonism or
decoding Egyptian hieroglyphics while wandering through the palace's vast collection

(10:21):
of books and admiring plants like lilacs and tulips, plants
that you would only be able to find within the
castle's walls. Rudolf's mother, Maria, was not happy with such
an environment for her first born son. Maria was also
a Habsburg surprise, surprise, Maximilian was her cousin, but she

(10:45):
grew up in Spain, and aside from blood, she had
almost nothing in common with her husband. In contrast to
the gentle intellectual Maximilian, Maria was severe and moreau, always
dressed in black, as was typical for the Spanish court.

(11:06):
Their greatest disagreement was religion. Maria, whose parents started the
Spanish Inquisition, was staunchly Catholic. She was so religious that
she refused to take anything to ease the pain when
she was giving birth to Rudolph, not even a glass
of water. Meanwhile, Rudolph's dad, Maximilian, had a pretty nonchalant

(11:31):
relationship with Christianity. He was ostensibly Catholic, but he was
so averse to the Vatican that many thought he was
a closet Lutheran. That worried Maria's side of the family.
Maria's brother Philip insisted that young Rudolph spend his adolescence
in Spain to make sure that he would be faithful

(11:53):
to the church. Maximilian initially bulked at the request. Maximilian
himself had been and shipped off to Spain when he
was a teen, and he hated it. The Spanish court
was known for being cold, rigid, and formal, but the
disagreements between him and his wife Maria were hard on Rudolph.

(12:14):
Rudolf didn't like harsh noises, bright lights, or conflict of
any kind. When his parents began to fight, he would flee,
retreating into his own internal world. In the end, Maximilian
and Maria sent eleven year old Rudolph and his brother

(12:36):
ernst Off to Spain for eight years. Like his father,
Rudolph hated Spain. When those eight years were finally up,
Rudolph typically reserved and morose, was uncharacteristically thrilled. Recalling this
period later in his life, he said he was seized

(12:56):
with such joy that it was impossible to sleep. Upon
Rudolf's return, Maximilian was happy to see his son back
in Vienna. But noted that his boy had changed. Rudolf
had always been quiet, but now, at twenty years old,
his reservedness came off as prideful, as if he was

(13:17):
too high status to talk to lowly political advisers. Maximilian
encouraged his son to loosen up so he could win
more friends and allies at court, but Rudolf couldn't let
his guard down so easily. His stiffness had been a
survival strategy in Spain, which demanded absolute formality and piousness

(13:40):
at all times. Maximilian had actually officially become the Holy
Roman Emperor a year after Rudolf arrived in Spain, and
he had spent the last seven years on the throne,
so Rudolf got a promotion too. He went from being
the Prince of Hungary to the King of Hungary and

(14:00):
then three years later to the King of Bohemia and
King of the Romans. Rudolf didn't do all that much
with his first taste of political power, and there isn't
a lot to say about his early years on the throne.
Biographers note that he brought a bunch of imperial women
to the palace so that he could finally get laid,

(14:23):
which needless to say, was not a priority for the
deeply Catholic Spanish court where Rudolph spent his adolescence. Rudolf
had barely gotten his political bearings as King of Hungary,
King of Bohemia and King of the Romans when his
father Maximilian died in fifteen seventy six. Suddenly it was

(14:47):
intimidating enough for Rudolph to inherit the Holy Roman Empire
at just twenty three years old. It was also an
incredibly politically fraught time after the Protestant Reformation. There were
increasingly violent conflicts between Catholics and Protestants and other religious groups. Meanwhile,

(15:11):
the Habsburgs were also at war with the Ottoman Empire
over territory in Cyprus and hungry. Maximilian had done his
best to balance those competing interests with policies that emphasized
religious tolerance, barely keeping a civil war between the Catholics
and Protestants at Bay, but his death would cause those

(15:33):
tensions to rise up. Maximilian's death also caused conflict within
his own family. In a move that was considered unusual,
Maximilian gave all of his land to his oldest son Rudolph,
leaving out Rudolf's younger brothers entirely. Rudolf tried to rectify

(15:54):
the situation by giving two of his brothers political control
of Austria, but it was too little, too late. The
pressure proved to be too much for Rudolph. His brothers
had come to resent him, and his father, the family
member he had been closest to, was dead. His empire

(16:15):
was beset by internal conflicts from the Protestants and external
threats from the Ottoman Empire. Terrified that he wouldn't be
able to live up to the expectations, Rudolf spiraled into
a debilitating depression for a full year. He withdrew to
his private chambers, so despondent that he could barely walk.

(16:38):
His attendants carried him from room to room. His entourage
was worried. Madness was an inheritance in the Habsburg family
just as much as Kunskammer's. Rudolf was the great grandson
of Juana le Looka, whom you might remember from her
eponymous episode on this podcast back in twin vent twenty one,

(17:01):
who became infamous after her supposed descent into madness after
her husband's death. Rudolf's cousin, Don Carlos, also suffered from
poor mental health issues. During Rudolf's stint in Spain, he
had witnessed Don Carlos's erratic behavior, like roasting live animals

(17:23):
and forcing a shoemaker to eat a particularly ugly pair
of shoes he had made. After Don Carlos tried to
stab a duke, he was imprisoned by his own father
and starved himself to death. Rudolf's court and Rudolf himself
feared that he might lose touch with reality and might

(17:47):
suffer a similar fate. In the face of all of
these familial, personal, and political stresses, there was one silver
lining in rudolphe life. He inherited his father's collection of art.
Throughout his childhood, Rudolf escaped the pressures of early royal

(18:09):
life by exploring the art that his father, grandfather, and
uncle had accumulated. Now that Rudolf ruled over the Holy
Roman Empire, he would no longer have to rely on
his family's good graces to explore his passions for art
and science. He could finally start a collection of his

(18:30):
very own. Rudolf began his reign by moving out of
his parents' house. He was sick of refereeing his brother's
dramas and having to involve his mother in his political affairs.
Vienna's bustling vibrants may have enchanted Rudolf as a child,

(18:55):
but it overwhelmed him as an adult. He much preferred
the peaceful and austere Prague, which was a better fit
for his reserved personality. Rudolph's new home was Prague Castle
atop Fradkinney Hill, surrounded by foreboding walls and a moat.

(19:16):
This was perfect for Rudolph, who preferred to be alone,
but even that isolation wasn't enough for him. Rudolf hated
being seen so much that he built roofed, wooden corridors
and staircases across the castle so members of his court
wouldn't be able to find him as he moved from

(19:38):
room to room. These new corridors were just one part
of the major home renovation project Rudolph undertook when he
moved into Prague Castle in fifteen eighty. He built new
stables for his favorite horses. He loved horses, particularly and
a Lucian grays, and he devoted an entire room to

(20:01):
his collection of rare saddles. Rudolf also loved birds and
created a heated, walled aviary filled with parrots, birds of paradise,
and even a dodo. He created an enclosure with tigers, bears,
and wolves. His favorite animal was a pet lion, which

(20:23):
he occasionally let roam around inside the palace. Rudolf also
built a new wing of the castle to house the
paintings he inherited from Phillip, Maximilian, and Ferdinand's respective collections,
along with a tower from which he could view the
night sky, laboratories for alchemical and scientific experiments, and a

(20:47):
botanical garden full of plants like orange, olive and pomegranate trees,
which were exceptionally rare in Eastern Europe at the time.
This new wing of Prague Castle reflected Rudolph's evolving vision
of his role as emperor. Back in the depressive episode

(21:08):
in the wake of his father's death, Rudolph's rule seemed
as though it was promising to be an endless diplomatic
nightmare of trying to appease power hungry relatives and quash
increasing religious conflict. But Rudolph believed that his reign could
transcend those political struggles. After all, he had been taught

(21:32):
his entire life that he was chosen by God to rule,
which put him at an advantage when it came to
pursuing deeper existential and philosophical questions. Rudolph took it upon
himself to figure out the meaning of life, and in
doing so, unite not only his empire but all of humanity.

(21:55):
If that goal feels a little vague, it's because it
ended up being a moving target. Sometimes Rudolf was more
focused on more typical scientific concerns, like cataloging the world's
animals and plants, or mapping the skies. Other times he
had more pie in the sky ambitions, like finding the

(22:19):
key to eternal life. In any case, he thought that
by attaining this knowledge for himself, he could save the world.
As a homebody, Rudolf wasn't going to go out into
the world to search for knowledge. He wanted the world
to come to him. So Rudolf became a patron of

(22:40):
the arts and sciences, bringing the greatest intellects to his
court and supporting their work. He set up studios for
artists to work in, gave them rooms in the castle,
and paid them annual stipends with bonuses for commissioned work.

(23:00):
As such, the artists that worked for Rudolf tended to
indulge his personal preferences, which were paintings that featured either
one hot naked women, two flattering depictions of Rudolph, or
three symbols from Greek mythology, ideally all three at the

(23:21):
same time. Rudolf also loved hidden sources of knowledge and
searching for meaning underneath appearances, a proto da Vinci Coode lover.
He was particularly fond of allegorical art. A perfect example
of his preferred style of art was Allegory of the

(23:41):
Virtues of Rudolf the Second by Bortolomeus Spranger, an artist
originally from Antwerp who was appointed the Rudolphine Court's master
painter around fifteen ninety. The painting features Beloona, the Roman
goddess of war, surrounded by other naked gold goddesses and
mythological figures. What clues us in to the fact that

(24:05):
this painting is an allegory, aside from the title, is
that the goddesses are wearing emblems of hungry, symbolizing Rudolf
and his empire's power and virtue. Another common feature of
these kinds of allegorical paintings were depictions of Rudolph atop
one of his beloved horses wielding a sword, Even though

(24:28):
Rudolf would never even come close to going into battle.
Rudolf visited the artists he sponsored every day, spending the
mornings admiring what they managed to get done the day before.
This obsession with art was annoying to politicians hoping for
Rudolf's guidance on religious conflicts and skirmishes with the Ottoman Empire,

(24:51):
but particularly shrewd diplomats found that Rudolph's love of art
could be manipulated to ser diplomatic ends. There was no
surer way of getting Rudolph's attention than by bringing him
a particularly rare painting or sculpture. In sixteen o five,

(25:13):
an ambassador for the Duke of Savoy wrote that Rudolph
spent two and a half hours sitting motionless looking at
paintings of fruit and fish markets that the Duke had
given him as a gift. Rudolf also collected scientific drawings
and telescopes and clocks, along with curios and objects which

(25:36):
he believed had mystical powers. He wanted his Kunstkamer to
function as an encyclopedia of natural phenomenon, including skeletons, drawings,
and preserved specimens of various animals and plants. He also
had what he believed was a Greek siren's jawbone, gullstones

(25:59):
from animals that were supposedly antidotes to poison, feathers from
a phoenix, and a biological drawing of a dragon. These
more mythical objects are of dubious origin. It is likely
that these jawbones and feathers came from other animals, and

(26:20):
even more likely that they did not have the magical
powers that Rudolph thought they did. Still, if Rudolf was
feeling poorly, he would go to his Kunstkamer, take out
one of his enchanted objects, and draw a magic circle
around himself for protection. Rudolf's strong draw toward both science

(26:50):
and the occult may seem contradictory from a modern point
of view. Particularly, we think of science as a position
of skepticism, a way of disproving conspiratorial or speculative theories
about how the world works. But we have to first
remember that the world was less connected in the sixteenth century.

(27:13):
And knowledge was less centralized. If you lived in fifteen
hundreds Prague, a dodo bird or polar bear or penguin
might have seemed just as fantastical as a dragon or
a phoenix. I mean, really, a narwhale really is kind
of as magical as a unicorn. Most scholars in the

(27:38):
sixteenth century thought that magic, science, and religion all reinforced
one another. Like the paintings in Rudolph's Kunstkammer, the natural
world functioned as a kind of allegory that could expose
God's designs for the universe or clarify this seeming chaos

(27:59):
of the world. The best example of this is in
Rudolph's Passion for astronomy and astrology. Rudolf supported a lot
of astronomers at Prague Castle, giving them a salary, a
rent free place to live, and state of the art telescopes.
In return, the astronomers were expected to provide Rudolph with

(28:23):
personalized star charts. This wasn't uncommon, as astronomy and astrology
were considered parts of the same discipline. Astronomers had to
accurately map the movement of celestial bodies in order to
figure out what they might portend about the future. Rudolf

(28:44):
consulted these astrologers nearly every day to get their advice
about how to rule, while they also worked on their
scientific projects. Rudolph relied so heavily on his favorite astrologer,
Tak o'brie, that other members of the court referred to
him as the evil spirit of the Emperor because of

(29:07):
his potential to influence the emperor for the worse. True
to his nickname, in sixteen hundred, Briy forecasted that Rudolf
would be assassinated sometime that year. A biography of Rudolf
notes that Briy was in a bad mood when he
made this prediction. He was particularly unhappy that Rudolf had

(29:28):
made him move to Prague from Denmark so that he
could receive more regular astrological readings. Rudolf took that prophecy
very seriously, and it amplified his already simmering paranoia and depression.
Rudolf had already suspected that he would die before his

(29:48):
fiftieth birthday, and he had just turned forty eight. Fearing
that any member of his court could assassinate him at
any time, Rudolf refused to leave his Kunstkammer or entertain
any visitors. As time passed, he grew so despondent that
he couldn't even manage to visit his artists' studios or

(30:11):
the scientific laboratories in his castle. Some of his previously
more reliable sources of joy. Brahi's dire astrological prediction would
turn out to be wrong. Rudolf survived sixteen hundred without
any assassination. That said, Rudolf's paranoia wasn't entirely misplaced. While

(30:36):
Rudolf was busy pursuing artistic and intellectual flights of fancy,
long simmering political, religious, and family conflicts were reaching a
breaking point. Sixteen hundred may not have been the year
that Rudolf died, but it was the year his rule

(30:57):
would begin to fall apart. Beyond the walls of Rudolf's Kunstkammer,
the Holy Roman Empire was in crisis after the Protestant
Reformation challenged the Vatican's authority. The Catholic Church pursued a

(31:19):
counter Reformation, trying to squash Protestant influence once and for all. Meanwhile,
the Holy Roman Empire's relationship with the Ottoman Empire was deteriorating.
For a while, Rudolf had been paying forty five thousand
sailers to the Ottomans in exchange for peace, but in

(31:41):
fifteen ninety two, the Sultan Grand Vizier suddenly demanded double
the payment. Rudolf tried to get away with sending the
Sultan gifts rather than money, but it didn't work. The
Ottomans declared war on Rudolph, invading Vienna and Hungary. Rudolph
convened the Imperial Parliament to request funds for the war,

(32:04):
and it took months of arguments between the Catholics and
Protestants before they finally agreed to send over the money.
As much as Rudolf tried to distract himself with his
impressive collection of curios in his Kunstkamer, Rudolf was increasingly
nervous about these sources of unrest growing in his empire.

(32:28):
He had little sympathy for the Catholics and for the Protestants,
and like his father, refused to take either side. Even
though he had never been more depressed in his life
and his empire was splintering beneath his feet, Rudolf held
out hope that he could unite all religions under his

(32:49):
dominion and usher in an era of peace. Meanwhile, there
were two forces conspiring against Rudolf to try to remove
him from the throne. On one side was the Vatican,
which had a number of issues with Rudolf's reign. Not
only was Rudolph too easy on the Protestants, but he

(33:11):
was also turning his attention towards magic, alchemy and the occult,
which the Church considered heretical. Rumors spread that Rudolf refused
to go to Mass fearing the sign of the Cross.
Even his depression was used as proof that Rudolph had
turned his back on the Church. The court's papal ambassador

(33:34):
wrote in a letter in sixteen hundred that Rudolph's melancholy
suggested that he was quote bewitched and in league with
the devil. In September of sixteen sixty, the papal ambassador
sat down with Rudolf and explained to him that he
was in serious threat of excommunication. Rudolf didn't take it

(33:58):
well at that the moment. The only response he had
was that the ambassador had bad breath. The President of
the Chamber of Finances believed that Rudolph was more agitated
than he was letting on writing. Quote night and day,
the Emperor is tortured by the idea that he is abandoned,
that he can have confidence in no one, that his

(34:21):
subjects have lost their respect for him, that one wants
to take his power and his life from him. Later
that night, Rudolph was in such a state of panic
that he couldn't sleep. He called for one of his ministers,
and when he arrived, tried to stab him with a dagger.

(34:42):
A sudden clap of thunder outside startled Rudolph narrowly, allowing
the minister to escape. Servants heard the commotion and rushed
to Rudolph's room, arriving to find him about to attempt suicide.
They managed to wrest the dagger away from him and

(35:03):
calm him down, but Rudolph was immobile for days afterward,
refusing to leave his chambers or let anyone inside. The
other force rooting for Rudolph's downfall was his own family,
who had little to know sympathy for his depression. One

(35:27):
family member in particular, had a vendetta against Rudolph his
younger brother Matthias. When their father Maximilian had died and
left all of his land to Rudolph. Rudolf had done
his best to distribute the land equally among his brothers,
with the exception of Matthias. At the time, Rudolf had

(35:47):
been angry at Matthias because he had taken on a
diplomatic role without Rudolph's permission, and Rudolph viewed that as
a direct threat to his rule. In retaliation, when Rudolph
tried to more evenly distribute their father's lands among the brothers,
he refused to give Matthias a share of their father's land.

(36:09):
He also prevented Matthias from marrying and spread a rumor
that Matthias was impotent. Matthias had been waiting for decades
to get revenge, and Rudolph's debilitating depression gave Matthias the
perfect opportunity to try and take over the empire. In

(36:30):
November of sixteen hundred, Matthias and his two youngest brothers
signed an agreement of concerted opposition against Rudolph. Rudolf was
terrified that Matthias would send someone to assassinate him, just
like his court astrologer had predicted. Rudolph finally turned his

(36:51):
attention to marrying and producing an air. Just so he
could keep Matthias off the throne, he disguised his court
painters as ambassadors and sent them across Europe to create
portraits of the available bachelorettes. But when the artists presented
their portraits to Rudolph, he found he had no desire

(37:14):
to reach out to any of the women. Instead, he
found that he much preferred staring at the paintings in
the safety of his Kunstcomer. Rudolph responded to his fears
of losing political power by delving deeper into alchemy and
the occult. He had become obsessed with finding the Philosopher's Stone,

(37:38):
which would grant him eternal life, but had, as you
can imagine, very little success. Rudolph spent less and less
time in the outside world and more and more time
in his Kunstcomer. He was so separate from public life
that he became known as the Recluse of Prague. Some

(38:00):
people even assumed he had died. Matthias began ousting Rudolph
from the throne, officially maneuvering around the emperor to pursue
his own ambitions. In sixteen o six, Matthias consulted with
the rest of the Habsburgs and formally declared Rudolph insane.

(38:21):
The family nominated Matthias to lead the Holy Roman Empire, but,
in perhaps a rare moment of sympathy for Rudolph, refused
to forcibly remove him from power. Instead, Matthias just took
on de facto political power. He went behind Rudolph's back
and negotiated peace with the Ottoman Empire later that year,

(38:45):
much to Rudolph's chagrin. Over the next five years, Rudolf
hemorrhaged authority and political goodwill, until finally, in sixteen eleven,
Matthias and his forces invaded Prague and forced Rudolph to
finally abdicate the throne. Matthias was crowned King of Bohemia

(39:09):
in the city Rudolph had made his home. Rudolf was
allowed to retain the title of Emperor and to continue
to live in Prague Castle until his death. During this time,
Rudolf drank heavily and barely left his chambers, unable to

(39:30):
make it to his stables. He would have his favorite
horses paraded outside his windows so that he could admire
them from a distance. Rudolph reserved his energy to try
and put a hex on Matthias. This part is a
little gruesome. Apologies. Rudolph baptized a dog and then killed it,

(39:53):
hoping that Matthias would suffer a similar tragedy, and even
witnessed ritual sex in a mass magic circle in an
attempt to reverse his bad fortune. In sixteen twelve, Rudolf
caught a bad case of bronchitis and his legs started
to swell. Physicians told him not to put shoes on,

(40:16):
but Rudolf didn't listen because he insisted on still going
to the Kunstkamer to see his collection, the only thing
that still gave him pleasure. After a while, his legs
had swollen so much that he couldn't take his shoes
off for days, and he developed gangreen. He died a

(40:37):
few days later of those complications. It turned out that
Rudolf's death aligned with at least one of his court
astrologer's predictions. One astrologer pointed out that Rudolf and his
beloved pet Lion had a similar star chart and forecasted

(40:58):
that they would die within day of each other. Sure enough,
Rudolf's pet Lion had died just three days before Rudolph did.
Seemingly terrified of the vengeful spirit of his dead brother,
Matthias refused to pay his respects to Rudolph's corpse. He

(41:19):
had similarly dismissive attitudes towards Rudolf's achievements. He fired most
of the scholars, artists, and alchemists Rudolf had supported over
his rule, and moved the Imperial court officially back to Vienna.
Matthias and his youngest brother, Maximilian took a few paintings

(41:40):
from the Kunstkamer, but left most of it to get
pillaged by various merchants. Only a fraction of Rudolf's vast
collection has been saved. Given the tragic ending of his story,
it's easy to see Rudolf as a failure. He was
a superstitious, spacey, timid ruler who was ill equipped to

(42:04):
handle the demands of the throne. It's hard to rationalize
Rudolph's obsession with the occult and his fruitless pursuit for
eternal life, and easy to dismiss the real work he sponsored,
especially because a century later the Enlightenment would undermine the
scholarly achievements of the Rudolphine court. The enlightenments most archetypal figures.

(42:30):
Descartes and Newton established that the world is reducible to
what can be observed and logically deduced, which is now
the foundation of modern science. This is not to say
that Rudolph's occult beliefs were particularly out there for the time.
Plenty of respected scientists practiced alchemy on the side, including

(42:54):
Isaac Newton, who had a fascination with alchemy that dominated
the back half of his life. But the consequences of
Rudolph's fixation on the supernatural were so dire that they
threatened to overshadow the rest of his legacy. His political
inaction stoked tensions that would lead to the Thirty Years War,

(43:17):
one of the deadliest conflicts in European history. Meanwhile, Rudolf's
greatest achievement, arguably the Kunstkamer itself, has been lost to time.
All that remains of it is an inventory, a list
of the many, many objects that were once inside, along

(43:37):
with whatever those who rated it had cared to preserve.
But those same qualities that probably led to Rudolph's downfall
had made his court vibrant and unique. Rudolf never questioned

(43:58):
the value of art and knowledge. While he had his,
let's say, quirks, he paid the artists and scientists that
set up shop in his palace, and he had deep
respect for their work. Rudolf's utter devotion to knowledge and
to the people who produced it allowed both to flourish.

(44:20):
Rudolf's kcomer may have looked haphazard, but it did have
an organizational principle. It wanted to surprise and delight in
exposing that which was once hidden. The randomness heightened the
pleasure of finding something you might not expect by opening

(44:41):
a cabinet or peering around the corner, whether it was
an allegory that explains a painting or a map of
the planet that could predict the future. Rudolph's passion for
discovering hidden meanings was infectious. You can still feel Rudolph's
whimsy and carry out through the artworks he commissioned. One

(45:03):
of these is a portrait of Rudolph as Vertumnus, the
Roman god of the seasons, a painting by Giuseppe Arsimbaldo.
This is no standard portrait. In fact, you might have
actually seen this portrait and not known it was of Rudolf.
Archimbaldo paints a Rudolf constructed out of fruits and vegetables,

(45:27):
with a pair for a nose, apples for cheeks, blueberries
for eyes, grapes for hair, and cabbage for shoulders. The
portrait shows Rudolf not as a recluse, or as a savior,
or even a human being, but as nature itself in
all of its beauty and abundance. This is what Rudolph wanted,

(45:50):
after all, to transcend the chaos of everyday existence and
find the meaning of life, absurd as it is in
its pure form. That's the story of Rudolf and his Kunstkamer.

(46:12):
But stick around to hear about how Rudolph's love of
astrology led to the discovery of some of the most
fundamental laws of physics. The most famous of Rudolph's court
astronomers was Johannes Kepler. Kepler had been brought to Prague

(46:35):
as an assistant to Rudolph's head astrologer, Tico Brahe. Unlike Tico,
whose dire predictions sent Rudolph spiraling, Kepler was more interested
in formulating the laws that governed celestial bodies movement in space.
Kepler had bad eyesight, so he couldn't map planets like

(46:58):
Brahi did. Instead, his strength was in mathematics. He wanted
to find out what caused the planet to move in
certain patterns at certain speeds. Kepler mostly stayed under the radar,
letting Brahi deal with Rudolph's whims. After Brahie's death, an
unfortunate urination incident that you can hear about in our

(47:22):
episode that we've done on Brahi and Rudolph's brief experiment
in attempting to bring Brahi back to life, Rudolph turned
his attention to Kepler, naming him the new Imperial Mathematician. Kepler,
like Brahi before him, had to give Rudolph personalized star

(47:43):
charts in addition to continuing his scholarly work. Kepler didn't
necessarily mind Like many astronomers at the time, He believed
in astrology's ability to explain people's personalities and futures, but
he also recognized that astrology was vulnerable to grifters that

(48:04):
manipulated their readings for their own personal gain. Because of
Rudolph's credulity, Kepler wrote in sixteen eleven, I hold that
astrology must not only be banished from the Senate, but
also from the heads of all those who wish to
advise the Emperor in his best interests, it must be

(48:28):
kept entirely out of his sight. Rudolph didn't follow Kepler's advice,
and Kepler still acted as one of Rudolph's personal astrologers.
Kepler tended to use astrology to hype up his patron
a strategy that allowed him to stay in Rudolph's good

(48:48):
graces during his time under Rudolph's patronage. When he wasn't
doing star charts, Kepler was wildly productive, producing thirty astronomers
called treatises. In one of them, Astronomia Nova, he found
that Earth's orbit was elliptical around the Sun. In the

(49:09):
introduction to Astronomy and Nova, Kepler explains how Rudolph's astrological
profile made him a particularly powerful ruler. Kepler's reading was
so flattering and effective that Galileo might have actually ripped
him off. A year after Astronomy and Nova came out,

(49:30):
Galileo dedicated his Astronomical treatise to Rudolph and included a
lengthy appreciation of Rudolph's star chart that was so similar
to Coupler's that some scholars think Galileo plagiarized it. This
is not to say that Rudolf and Kepler didn't have
their disagreements, especially because Rudolf rarely paid Kepler on time

(49:55):
and sometimes withheld payments and bonuses because of the Empire's
financial trouble. But Keupler appreciated Rudolph's patronage. He described Rudolph
as a star around which he orbited, like the Earth
around the sun. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio

(50:26):
and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is
created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing
and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender,
and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by
Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh

(50:50):
Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the Eyeheart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.