ABSTRACT
For Georg Eder, the years 1550-73 were ones in which it seemed he could do no wrong. His star rose steadily at the court and the university, and he and his young family appear to have settled well into the city.1 For example, we know from the court quartering records that by 1566 at the latest, Eder had attained the status of burgher and was living right in the heart of Vienna in a two-storey house at number 956 Weihburgasse, not far from Stephansdom.2 We know too that Eder’s confessional stance as a staunch Catholic was well known from his first arrival in Vienna, but far from being an obstacle to his promotion to high office, it gave his Habsburg employers another way in which the Catholic presence could be strengthened at the court and in the city. But this had to be an aulic Catholicism, one that was first and foremost about the preservation and proclamation of the authority of the ruling dynasty. For the first part of his career in Vienna, up to 1573, Georg Eder followed the complex rules of the game to the letter, and his early success in court and university life stemmed directly from his very public support of the dynasty’s interests.
