Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor

Rudolf II continues to grow more interesting to me personally.

I have mentioned the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II on this blog before, who reigned from 1576 to 1612, welcomed both Protestants and Catholics at his court in a time when tension was high between denominations in most parts of western Europe, and named Ulrich Bollinger to be an Imperial poet laureate.

Recently I found out -- and it didn't surprise me at all -- that many of the leading clockmakers of the time worked in Prague, where Rudolf's court was. It fits in with Rudolf's fascination with whatever was new, strange and clever.

Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler -- you've heard of them, I'm sure -- were there too, and there was a certain amount of fruitful interaction between the astronomers and the timekeepers. When Brahe first arrived at Rudolf's court, the two of them spoke for a long time alone. A monarch and a mere lowly scientist, speaking with no one else around: that was very unusual at that time, for any monarch, let alone the Emperor. But Rudolf was very unusual.

So, anyway, leading clockmakers were at Rudolf's court -- and some of them were also attempting to make perpetual motion machines -- and this was the right time for them to be making early watches, also. Watches go back to before 1550. I don't know whether any watches were made at Rudolf's court or nearby in Prague. And it may possibly be hard to find out for sure, because Rudolf's collections were plundered by the Queen of Sweden around 1645, and many objects got lost that way. It's shame, because everyone at the time agreed that Rudolf had put together a very remarkable collection of art, books, machines (including clocks and possibly watches), etc.

One of my sources of information about these sorts of things is the book Rudolf II and his World, by RJW Evans. It came out in the 1970's, and, unusually for its time, Evans, when quoting things which were written in Rudolf's time, left a lot of German and Latin untranslated. My kind of guy, my kind of book. Most historians writing for English audiences in the late 20th century or later, no matter how snooty they are, would either translate everything into English, or cite the original German and Latin and follow it immediately with an English translation. But Professor Evans just assumes -- correctly, in my case -- that he doesn't need to translate the German and Latin. He does translate the Czech and Hungarian and other languages.

You see, there are a few other people like me.