In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Austria 127 71. In this country, decocted salt is imported to neighboring regions . It also contains rich iron mines and silver workings of no mean quality, though not much silver is extracted owing to the indifference of its rulers.273 22 AUSTRIA 72. I THINK it unnecessary to describe Austria here, since I have published a history devoted to it.274 After the death of Emperor Albert , the people of this country entrusted themselves to Frederick with the stipulation that, if the pregnant queen gave birth to a male child, he would be its guardian; if a female, he would become ruler of the land. When Ladislas [Postumus] was born, as I described previously , Frederick took on his guardianship.275 The soldiers who had served under Albert claimed they had been cheated of their wages and laid waste to the country with acts of brigandage and arson. Frederick bought off their harassment for seventy thousand gold pieces at the time when the Bohemians and Hungarians were raiding Austria. 73. The eldest of Ladislas’s sisters married Duke Wilhelm of Saxony .276 74. John Hunyadi, after vainly petitioning Frederick for the crown of the Hungarian kingdom, entered Austria with twelve thousand horsemen and plundered and burned all the territory between Vi273 . Reading incuria (Urb. Lat. 885) for van Heck’s in curia. 274. The most recent edition is Historia Austrialis (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, nov. ser. 24), ed. Julia Knödler and Martin Wagendorfer (Hannover: Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2009). A previous version of this work became known as the Historia Friderici III imperatoris, an unfinished history on which Aeneas worked from 1452–58. See Rolando Montecalvo, “The New Landesgeschichte: Aeneas Silvius on Austria and Bohemia,” in Pius II, ‘El Più Expeditivo Pontifice’: Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini , ed. Zweder von Martels and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 74–75. 275. Ladislas was born Feb. 22, 1440. See para. 6. 276. Anna (1432–62) and Wilhelm III of Saxony (1425–82), landgrave of Thuringia; the two were married in 1446. 128 Austria enna and the mountains of Styria.277 When the emperor set out for Italy, the Austrians asked him to release Ladislas into their custody so that he might succeed his father, having now almost reached maturity . When their request was rejected, they began an armed rebellion on the initiative of two Ulrichs—one, Ulrich, the count of Cilli, the other Ulrich Eytzing278—and laid siege to Frederick in Wiener Neustadt as he was returning from Italy. They were joined by Henry Rožmberk,279 a Bohemian, with two hundred horsemen and one thousand infantry, and although they had been directed by Pope Nicholas not to interfere with the emperor’s guardianship, they stuck to their criminal plan in defiance of the orders of the Apostolic See and with contempt for its supreme authority.280 75. It was then that the learned university of Vienna issued an ignorant opinion, when it ruled that the orders of the pope could be suspended by appealing to a future council.281 From that time forth, the city of Vienna and all of Austria were embroiled in constant fighting and paid the penalty for this insult to religion. Frederick yielded to the fury of the populace and surrendered his ward, who was still a boy of tender age, into the hands of the count of Cilli, on condition that he summon the relatives and friends of both sides to the city of Vienna and arbitrate a defini277 . Hunyadi actually invaded these regions twice in 1446. First, in March, to punish Ulrich Cilli for his raids in Slavonia and Croatia, and again in November, in the hopes of pushing Frederick III to negotiate the release of Ladislas Postumus; see Held, Hunyadi, 118–23. 278. Eytzing or Eytzinger (c. 1398–1460), a magnate in lower Austria, a favorite of Emperor Albert II (d. 1439), and a leader of the uprising of the Austrian Estates against Frederick III in 1452; see Lexikon des Mittelalters vol. 4, no. 1: 195. 279. Henry RoŽmberk (or Rosenberg) (d. 1457) was a member of a powerful Bohemian baronial family; see John M. Klassen, The Nobility and the Making of the Hussite Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 40 and passim. 280. Aeneas is partial to Frederick, whose refusal to allow his ward to take power in both Hungary and Bohemia was a source of widespread discontent. 281. For more on this event and the university’s long-standing support of...

Share