Maximilian I by Robert Seton-Watson

Author:Robert Seton-Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

IV

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“ THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM is the belief . that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality."—Walter Pater.

IT is with a certain sense of relief that we pass from the tragi-comedy of Maximilian’s political life to those realms where lies his real claim to fame and gratitude. Great ambitions thwarted by the sordid details of poverty are never a pleasant subject of contemplation; and there have been few monarchs in whose lives they have played a more prominent part. But it may fairly be argued that all the more credit is due to one who, under such unfavourable circumstances, ever remained buoyant and full of the joy of living, and whose frequent disappointments never soured his enthusiasms nor turned him from the path of knowledge. The first of his race to welcome the new culture, and possessed of that joyous temperament which seems to offer immortal youth, Maximilian was acclaimed by the scholars of his day as the ideal Emperor of Dante’s or Petrarch’s dreams. His predecessors had shown little interest in intellectual pursuits. Sigismund had indeed crowned several poets, but was always too needy himself to spare much money for their salaries; Frederick III was devoid of literary tastes, and, in spite of his connection with Aeneas Sylvius, gave but slight encouragement to art or learning. But Maximilian surrendered himself, with all his habitual energy and enthusiasm, to the new spirit of the age.

In spite of his many political failures he remains to all time the darling of the scholar and the poet. This almost universal favour he did not win by liberal donations or the grant of lucrative posts, for he was seldom free from money embarrassments—nor by the maintenance of a gorgeous court and imposing ceremonial—for his endless projects and expeditions made any fixed residence impossible; but by his restless activity, his manly self-reliance, his wide and human sympathy with all ranks and classes of the people. Above all, he identified himself with the struggling ideals of a new German national feeling, and with the growing opposition to France, to Italy, and to Rome; and, as a national hero, inspired the devotion alike of the scholar, the knight, and the peasant. “Mein Ehr ist deutschEhr, und deutsch Ehr ist mein Ehr” is the ruling motive of his life; and the praise which is continually on all lips is, before all, the result of his passionate loyalty to that larger Germany of which the poet sings—

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