ABSTRACT
In 1573, the high-ranking Catholic counsellor Dr Georg Eder described the confessional moderation of the Habsburg Court where he worked in deeply unflattering terms. The religious policies of the successive heads of the Austrian branch of the Habsburg dynasty caused deep frustration in Catholic Europe, particularly in the highly active Tridentine bases of Rome, Spain and Bavaria. Popular Protestantism had been preached on the streets of Vienna since the 1520s and, despite regular efforts by Ferdinand I, was never successfully suppressed. It was under the rule of Maxmilian II, however, that this movement received sufficient official leeway for Protestantism to further establish itself in Vienna and its environs. The brand of Catholicism espoused by the heads of the Austrian Habsburg Court in the second half of the sixteenth century was one propelled by the wish for enhanced dynastic control over their own affairs, and fuelled by the principles of humanism.
