The World Inside of Rudolf II's Cabinet of Curiosities

and mingled in the castle's grand corridors. But few of those illustrious visitors would have had the privilege of visiting the most private and opulent chambers in the castle, the personal domain of the Emperor Rudolf the Second of Habsburg. Rudolph was an accomplished, even obsessive collector, and his private chambers housed the paintings, sculptures, and other treasures he had gathered over the course of his reign. This section of the palace was known as the Kunstkamer, which translates to

cabinet of curiosities. That said, Rudolph's Kunstkamer was no mere cabinet. The collection took up an entire wing of the castle. The existence of the Kunstkamer itself was not a secret Rudolf's political advisers were familiar with the emperor's collection hobby as an annoying distraction from his more important task of

ruling the Holy Roman Empire. But no matter how much his advisers protested, Rudolf poured more and more of his time and energy into the Kunstkamer, meeting with artists that could contribute to his collection, sending diplomats across the world to bring back treasures, and wandering through the rooms to gaze at his most prized possessions. But while everyone in court had heard about the Kunstkamer, only a select few

had actually seen what was inside. If you were a high level dignitary Rudolph wanted to impress, he might have escorted you into the chamber and showed off the collection to you himself. You could have also tried to bribe Rudolph by bringing him an especially rare painting or sculpture, hoping that it might earn you an hour or two inside. If you were feeling especially brave, you could have tried

to sneak in. One merchant pulled that off. He arrived at the castle to visit his friend, a painter that Rudolf had employed. The painter managed to bring the merchant into the Kunstkammer in secret while Rudolph was eating. In any case, if you were lucky enough to see the Kunstkamer, you'd be led through a narrow corridor tucked between a

study and a courtyard, up a set of stairs. Upon entering the main chamber, you'd encounter a large, green table covered with well stuff, globes, clocks, caskets, strange musical instruments. At the head of the table you would see a peacock automaton that operated by clockwork. It could walk, squawk, and wave its tail, which was made out of actual peacock feathers. Surrounding the table on all sides was a

variety of paintings, statues, clocks, goblets, and more. Some of the items were free standing on the floor, others were perched on writing desks, chests, or cabinets made of ebony and marble. A unicorn horn, which was most likely a narwhale tusk, lay on a green writing desk off to the side of the chamber, while a bust of Rudolph himself sat on a case pushed up against a wall. If you opened up these chests, and cabinets, you would

find even more treasures. One small gray writing desk contained forty eight rings, shells, spoons, and various pieces of coral. Another case was filled with one hundred and five knives and daggers, one of which was rumored to be the very weapon that killed Julius Caesar. The Kunstcomer was so vast and chaotic that an archivist started compiling an inventory of the space in sixteen o seven and wouldn't finish until four years later, just before Rudolph would die. It wasn't,

and still isn't clear how the collection was organized. It's even less clear why Rudolf the second was so consumed with collecting all of these objects in the first place. On one hand, the Kunstkamer was an artistic and scientific achievement, which reflected Rudolph's commitment to expanding the frontiers of human knowledge. Rudolph was the patron of many artists and scientists, some of whose work ran up against the worldview of the

Catholic Church. The Church's attempt to stem the spread of Protestantism and protect their faith often meant punishing individuals whose ideas challenged it. Rudolf hoped his objects might become a universal encyclopedia of nature, which could lead to scientific breakthroughs, even if those discoveries didn't happen during his lifetime. His collection and patronage laid the groundwork for further scientific exploration that would continue long after his death. But at the

same time, the Kunstkammer reflected Rudolph's paranoia and gullibility. Throughout his life, Rudolf suffered from what we now might call depression. When his mental health worsened, Rudolf would spend months nearly catatonic with despair, Unable to engage in official business. He had a persistent fear of assassination, and so he avoided people altogether, even his closest advisors. He spent all of his time alone in his Kunstkammer, the only place he

felt truly safe. In the face of increasing uncertainty, anxiety, and hopelessness, Rudolph developed an obsession with alchemy and magic. He fixated on finding the Philosopher's Stone, which would give him eternal life and assuage his fears about an untimely death. Once and for all. That interest manifested in the Kunstkammer, as well. It contained magical objects like the aforementioned unicorn horn. Towards the end of Rudolph's life, he started casting spells

and even conducting sex rituals in the secret chambers. The question of how to understand the Kunstkamer and its Emperor has vexed scholars for centuries. During his lifetime, Rudolph the Second was known by two very different nicknames that represent his diametrically opposed qualities. He was known as the Great

Master of Prague and the Recluse of Prague. Which one was he the Great Master, a wise tolerant leader who championed intellectual freedom, or the Recluse, debilitated by anxiety and depression and led astray by the fruitlessness of his quest for eternal life. These are the questions we can't find answers to in a cabinet of curiosities, no matter how vast. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. Rudolph the Second was not the first Habsburg with an extensive art collection.

His paternal grandfather, Ferdinand the First had one too, in Ambress Castle in Austria, where he Ferdinand stored his fragments from classical coins, statues, rare books, paintings and jewels. Rudolph's father, Maximilian the Second, inherited Ferdinand's passion for art collection and philosophy. While Maximilian never had a Kunstkammer of his own, he did build a number of royal gardens in Vienna and Prague that displayed exotic plants and animals like lions, tigers, bears,

oh mai, and parrots which Renaissance Europeans called Indian crows. Maximilian, Rudolph's father was also the first to catalog and organize the Hebsburg holdings of books, which became the Austrian National Library that still exists to this day. In fifteen twenty two, Rudolph the second was born. He was Maximilian's oldest son, and he grew up in Vienna into a freethinking scholarly environment.

Maximilian attracted some of the greatest humanist, philosoph and scientists in Western Europe to his castle in Vienna, and some of them became Rudolph's earliest tutors. Rudolf spent his childhood listening in on cutting edge scholarly conversations about neoplatonism or decoding Egyptian hieroglyphics while wandering through the palace's vast collection of books and admiring plants like lilacs and tulips, plants that you would only be able to find within the

castle's walls. Rudolf's mother, Maria, was not happy with such an environment for her first born son. Maria was also a Habsburg surprise, surprise, Maximilian was her cousin, but she grew up in Spain, and aside from blood, she had almost nothing in common with her husband. In contrast to the gentle intellectual Maximilian, Maria was severe and moreau, always dressed in black, as was typical for the Spanish court. Their greatest disagreement was religion. Maria, whose parents started the

Spanish Inquisition, was staunchly Catholic. She was so religious that she refused to take anything to ease the pain when she was giving birth to Rudolph, not even a glass of water. Meanwhile, Rudolph's dad, Maximilian, had a pretty nonchalant relationship with Christianity. He was ostensibly Catholic, but he was so averse to the Vatican that many thought he was a closet Lutheran. That worried Maria's side of the family.

Maria's brother Philip insisted that young Rudolph spend his adolescence in Spain to make sure that he would be faithful to the church. Maximilian initially bulked at the request. Maximilian himself had been and shipped off to Spain when he was a teen, and he hated it. The Spanish court was known for being cold, rigid, and formal, but the disagreements between him and his wife Maria were hard on Rudolph. Rudolf didn't like harsh noises, bright lights, or conflict of

any kind. When his parents began to fight, he would flee, retreating into his own internal world. In the end, Maximilian and Maria sent eleven year old Rudolph and his brother ernst Off to Spain for eight years. Like his father, Rudolph hated Spain. When those eight years were finally up, Rudolph typically reserved and morose, was uncharacteristically thrilled. Recalling this period later in his life, he said he was seized

with such joy that it was impossible to sleep. Upon Rudolf's return, Maximilian was happy to see his son back in Vienna. But noted that his boy had changed. Rudolf had always been quiet, but now, at twenty years old, his reservedness came off as prideful, as if he was too high status to talk to lowly political advisers. Maximilian encouraged his son to loosen up so he could win more friends and allies at court, but Rudolf couldn't let

his guard down so easily. His stiffness had been a survival strategy in Spain, which demanded absolute formality and piousness at all times. Maximilian had actually officially become the Holy Roman Emperor a year after Rudolf arrived in Spain, and he had spent the last seven years on the throne, so Rudolf got a promotion too. He went from being the Prince of Hungary to the King of Hungary and then three years later to the King of Bohemia and

King of the Romans. Rudolf didn't do all that much with his first taste of political power, and there isn't a lot to say about his early years on the throne. Biographers note that he brought a bunch of imperial women to the palace so that he could finally get laid, which needless to say, was not a priority for the deeply Catholic Spanish court where Rudolph spent his adolescence. Rudolf had barely gotten his political bearings as King of Hungary, King of Bohemia and King of the Romans when his

father Maximilian died in fifteen seventy six. Suddenly it was intimidating enough for Rudolph to inherit the Holy Roman Empire at just twenty three years old. It was also an incredibly politically fraught time after the Protestant Reformation. There were increasingly violent conflicts between Catholics and Protestants and other religious groups. Meanwhile, the Habsburgs were also at war with the Ottoman Empire

over territory in Cyprus and hungry. Maximilian had done his best to balance those competing interests with policies that emphasized religious tolerance, barely keeping a civil war between the Catholics and Protestants at Bay, but his death would cause those tensions to rise up. Maximilian's death also caused conflict within his own family. In a move that was considered unusual, Maximilian gave all of his land to his oldest son Rudolph,

leaving out Rudolf's younger brothers entirely. Rudolf tried to rectify the situation by giving two of his brothers political control of Austria, but it was too little, too late. The pressure proved to be too much for Rudolph. His brothers had come to resent him, and his father, the family member he had been closest to, was dead. His empire was beset by internal conflicts from the Protestants and external

threats from the Ottoman Empire. Terrified that he wouldn't be able to live up to the expectations, Rudolf spiraled into a debilitating depression for a full year. He withdrew to his private chambers, so despondent that he could barely walk. His attendants carried him from room to room. His entourage was worried. Madness was an inheritance in the Habsburg family

just as much as Kunskammer's. Rudolf was the great grandson of Juana le Looka, whom you might remember from her eponymous episode on this podcast back in twin vent twenty one, who became infamous after her supposed descent into madness after her husband's death. Rudolf's cousin, Don Carlos, also suffered from poor mental health issues. During Rudolf's stint in Spain, he had witnessed Don Carlos's erratic behavior, like roasting live animals and forcing a shoemaker to eat a particularly ugly pair

of shoes he had made. After Don Carlos tried to stab a duke, he was imprisoned by his own father and starved himself to death. Rudolf's court and Rudolf himself feared that he might lose touch with reality and might suffer a similar fate. In the face of all of these familial, personal, and political stresses, there was one silver lining in rudolphe life. He inherited his father's collection of art.

Throughout his childhood, Rudolf escaped the pressures of early royal life by exploring the art that his father, grandfather, and uncle had accumulated. Now that Rudolf ruled over the Holy Roman Empire, he would no longer have to rely on his family's good graces to explore his passions for art and science. He could finally start a collection of his very own. Rudolf began his reign by moving out of

his parents' house. He was sick of refereeing his brother's dramas and having to involve his mother in his political affairs. Vienna's bustling vibrants may have enchanted Rudolf as a child, but it overwhelmed him as an adult. He much preferred the peaceful and austere Prague, which was a better fit for his reserved personality. Rudolph's new home was Prague Castle atop Fradkinney Hill, surrounded by foreboding walls and a moat. This was perfect for Rudolph, who preferred to be alone,

but even that isolation wasn't enough for him. Rudolf hated being seen so much that he built roofed, wooden corridors and staircases across the castle so members of his court wouldn't be able to find him as he moved from room to room. These new corridors were just one part of the major home renovation project Rudolph undertook when he moved into Prague Castle in fifteen eighty. He built new

stables for his favorite horses. He loved horses, particularly and a Lucian grays, and he devoted an entire room to his collection of rare saddles. Rudolf also loved birds and created a heated, walled aviary filled with parrots, birds of paradise, and even a dodo. He created an enclosure with tigers, bears, and wolves. His favorite animal was a pet lion, which

he occasionally let roam around inside the palace. Rudolf also built a new wing of the castle to house the paintings he inherited from Phillip, Maximilian, and Ferdinand's respective collections, along with a tower from which he could view the night sky, laboratories for alchemical and scientific experiments, and a botanical garden full of plants like orange, olive and pomegranate trees, which were exceptionally rare in Eastern Europe at the time.

This new wing of Prague Castle reflected Rudolph's evolving vision of his role as emperor. Back in the depressive episode in the wake of his father's death, Rudolph's rule seemed as though it was promising to be an endless diplomatic nightmare of trying to appease power hungry relatives and quash increasing religious conflict. But Rudolph believed that his reign could

transcend those political struggles. After all, he had been taught his entire life that he was chosen by God to rule, which put him at an advantage when it came to pursuing deeper existential and philosophical questions. Rudolph took it upon himself to figure out the meaning of life, and in doing so, unite not only his empire but all of humanity. If that goal feels a little vague, it's because it

ended up being a moving target. Sometimes Rudolf was more focused on more typical scientific concerns, like cataloging the world's animals and plants, or mapping the skies. Other times he had more pie in the sky ambitions, like finding the key to eternal life. In any case, he thought that by attaining this knowledge for himself, he could save the world. As a homebody, Rudolf wasn't going to go out into the world to search for knowledge. He wanted the world

to come to him. So Rudolf became a patron of the arts and sciences, bringing the greatest intellects to his court and supporting their work. He set up studios for artists to work in, gave them rooms in the castle, and paid them annual stipends with bonuses for commissioned work.

As such, the artists that worked for Rudolf tended to indulge his personal preferences, which were paintings that featured either one hot naked women, two flattering depictions of Rudolph, or three symbols from Greek mythology, ideally all three at the same time. Rudolf also loved hidden sources of knowledge and searching for meaning underneath appearances, a proto da Vinci Coode lover.

He was particularly fond of allegorical art. A perfect example of his preferred style of art was Allegory of the Virtues of Rudolf the Second by Bortolomeus Spranger, an artist originally from Antwerp who was appointed the Rudolphine Court's master painter around fifteen ninety. The painting features Beloona, the Roman goddess of war, surrounded by other naked gold goddesses and

mythological figures. What clues us in to the fact that this painting is an allegory, aside from the title, is that the goddesses are wearing emblems of hungry, symbolizing Rudolf and his empire's power and virtue. Another common feature of these kinds of allegorical paintings were depictions of Rudolph atop one of his beloved horses wielding a sword, Even though Rudolf would never even come close to going into battle.

Rudolf visited the artists he sponsored every day, spending the mornings admiring what they managed to get done the day before. This obsession with art was annoying to politicians hoping for Rudolf's guidance on religious conflicts and skirmishes with the Ottoman Empire, but particularly shrewd diplomats found that Rudolph's love of art could be manipulated to ser diplomatic ends. There was no surer way of getting Rudolph's attention than by bringing him

a particularly rare painting or sculpture. In sixteen o five, an ambassador for the Duke of Savoy wrote that Rudolph spent two and a half hours sitting motionless looking at paintings of fruit and fish markets that the Duke had given him as a gift. Rudolf also collected scientific drawings and telescopes and clocks, along with curios and objects which he believed had mystical powers. He wanted his Kunstkamer to function as an encyclopedia of natural phenomenon, including skeletons, drawings,

and preserved specimens of various animals and plants. He also had what he believed was a Greek siren's jawbone, gullstones from animals that were supposedly antidotes to poison, feathers from a phoenix, and a biological drawing of a dragon. These more mythical objects are of dubious origin. It is likely that these jawbones and feathers came from other animals, and even more likely that they did not have the magical

powers that Rudolph thought they did. Still, if Rudolf was feeling poorly, he would go to his Kunstkamer, take out one of his enchanted objects, and draw a magic circle around himself for protection. Rudolf's strong draw toward both science and the occult may seem contradictory from a modern point of view. Particularly, we think of science as a position of skepticism, a way of disproving conspiratorial or speculative theories

about how the world works. But we have to first remember that the world was less connected in the sixteenth century. And knowledge was less centralized. If you lived in fifteen hundreds Prague, a dodo bird or polar bear or penguin might have seemed just as fantastical as a dragon or a phoenix. I mean, really, a narwhale really is kind of as magical as a unicorn. Most scholars in the sixteenth century thought that magic, science, and religion all reinforced

one another. Like the paintings in Rudolph's Kunstkammer, the natural world functioned as a kind of allegory that could expose God's designs for the universe or clarify this seeming chaos of the world. The best example of this is in Rudolph's Passion for astronomy and astrology. Rudolf supported a lot of astronomers at Prague Castle, giving them a salary, a rent free place to live, and state of the art telescopes. In return, the astronomers were expected to provide Rudolph with

personalized star charts. This wasn't uncommon, as astronomy and astrology were considered parts of the same discipline. Astronomers had to accurately map the movement of celestial bodies in order to figure out what they might portend about the future. Rudolf consulted these astrologers nearly every day to get their advice about how to rule, while they also worked on their

scientific projects. Rudolph relied so heavily on his favorite astrologer, Tak o'brie, that other members of the court referred to him as the evil spirit of the Emperor because of his potential to influence the emperor for the worse. True to his nickname, in sixteen hundred, Briy forecasted that Rudolf would be assassinated sometime that year. A biography of Rudolf notes that Briy was in a bad mood when he

made this prediction. He was particularly unhappy that Rudolf had made him move to Prague from Denmark so that he could receive more regular astrological readings. Rudolf took that prophecy very seriously, and it amplified his already simmering paranoia and depression. Rudolf had already suspected that he would die before his

fiftieth birthday, and he had just turned forty eight. Fearing that any member of his court could assassinate him at any time, Rudolf refused to leave his Kunstkammer or entertain any visitors. As time passed, he grew so despondent that he couldn't even manage to visit his artists' studios or the scientific laboratories in his castle. Some of his previously more reliable sources of joy. Brahi's dire astrological prediction would turn out to be wrong. Rudolf survived sixteen hundred without

any assassination. That said, Rudolf's paranoia wasn't entirely misplaced. While Rudolf was busy pursuing artistic and intellectual flights of fancy, long simmering political, religious, and family conflicts were reaching a breaking point. Sixteen hundred may not have been the year that Rudolf died, but it was the year his rule would begin to fall apart. Beyond the walls of Rudolf's Kunstkammer, the Holy Roman Empire was in crisis after the Protestant

Reformation challenged the Vatican's authority. The Catholic Church pursued a counter Reformation, trying to squash Protestant influence once and for all. Meanwhile, the Holy Roman Empire's relationship with the Ottoman Empire was deteriorating. For a while, Rudolf had been paying forty five thousand sailers to the Ottomans in exchange for peace, but in fifteen ninety two, the Sultan Grand Vizier suddenly demanded double the payment. Rudolf tried to get away with sending the

Sultan gifts rather than money, but it didn't work. The Ottomans declared war on Rudolph, invading Vienna and Hungary. Rudolph convened the Imperial Parliament to request funds for the war, and it took months of arguments between the Catholics and Protestants before they finally agreed to send over the money. As much as Rudolf tried to distract himself with his impressive collection of curios in his Kunstkamer, Rudolf was increasingly nervous about these sources of unrest growing in his empire.

He had little sympathy for the Catholics and for the Protestants, and like his father, refused to take either side. Even though he had never been more depressed in his life and his empire was splintering beneath his feet, Rudolf held out hope that he could unite all religions under his dominion and usher in an era of peace. Meanwhile, there were two forces conspiring against Rudolf to try to remove him from the throne. On one side was the Vatican,

which had a number of issues with Rudolf's reign. Not only was Rudolph too easy on the Protestants, but he was also turning his attention towards magic, alchemy and the occult, which the Church considered heretical. Rumors spread that Rudolf refused to go to Mass fearing the sign of the Cross. Even his depression was used as proof that Rudolph had

turned his back on the Church. The court's papal ambassador wrote in a letter in sixteen hundred that Rudolph's melancholy suggested that he was quote bewitched and in league with the devil. In September of sixteen sixty, the papal ambassador sat down with Rudolf and explained to him that he was in serious threat of excommunication. Rudolf didn't take it well at that the moment. The only response he had

was that the ambassador had bad breath. The President of the Chamber of Finances believed that Rudolph was more agitated than he was letting on writing. Quote night and day, the Emperor is tortured by the idea that he is abandoned, that he can have confidence in no one, that his subjects have lost their respect for him, that one wants to take his power and his life from him. Later that night, Rudolph was in such a state of panic

that he couldn't sleep. He called for one of his ministers, and when he arrived, tried to stab him with a dagger. A sudden clap of thunder outside startled Rudolph narrowly, allowing the minister to escape. Servants heard the commotion and rushed to Rudolph's room, arriving to find him about to attempt suicide. They managed to wrest the dagger away from him and calm him down, but Rudolph was immobile for days afterward,

refusing to leave his chambers or let anyone inside. The other force rooting for Rudolph's downfall was his own family, who had little to know sympathy for his depression. One family member in particular, had a vendetta against Rudolph his younger brother Matthias. When their father Maximilian had died and left all of his land to Rudolph. Rudolf had done his best to distribute the land equally among his brothers,

with the exception of Matthias. At the time, Rudolf had been angry at Matthias because he had taken on a diplomatic role without Rudolph's permission, and Rudolph viewed that as a direct threat to his rule. In retaliation, when Rudolph tried to more evenly distribute their father's lands among the brothers, he refused to give Matthias a share of their father's land. He also prevented Matthias from marrying and spread a rumor

that Matthias was impotent. Matthias had been waiting for decades to get revenge, and Rudolph's debilitating depression gave Matthias the perfect opportunity to try and take over the empire. In November of sixteen hundred, Matthias and his two youngest brothers signed an agreement of concerted opposition against Rudolph. Rudolf was terrified that Matthias would send someone to assassinate him, just like his court astrologer had predicted. Rudolph finally turned his

attention to marrying and producing an air. Just so he could keep Matthias off the throne, he disguised his court painters as ambassadors and sent them across Europe to create portraits of the available bachelorettes. But when the artists presented their portraits to Rudolph, he found he had no desire to reach out to any of the women. Instead, he found that he much preferred staring at the paintings in

the safety of his Kunstcomer. Rudolph responded to his fears of losing political power by delving deeper into alchemy and the occult. He had become obsessed with finding the Philosopher's Stone, which would grant him eternal life, but had, as you can imagine, very little success. Rudolph spent less and less time in the outside world and more and more time in his Kunstcomer. He was so separate from public life that he became known as the Recluse of Prague. Some

people even assumed he had died. Matthias began ousting Rudolph from the throne, officially maneuvering around the emperor to pursue his own ambitions. In sixteen o six, Matthias consulted with the rest of the Habsburgs and formally declared Rudolph insane. The family nominated Matthias to lead the Holy Roman Empire, but, in perhaps a rare moment of sympathy for Rudolph, refused to forcibly remove him from power. Instead, Matthias just took

on de facto political power. He went behind Rudolph's back and negotiated peace with the Ottoman Empire later that year, much to Rudolph's chagrin. Over the next five years, Rudolf hemorrhaged authority and political goodwill, until finally, in sixteen eleven, Matthias and his forces invaded Prague and forced Rudolph to finally abdicate the throne. Matthias was crowned King of Bohemia in the city Rudolph had made his home. Rudolf was allowed to retain the title of Emperor and to continue

to live in Prague Castle until his death. During this time, Rudolf drank heavily and barely left his chambers, unable to make it to his stables. He would have his favorite horses paraded outside his windows so that he could admire them from a distance. Rudolph reserved his energy to try and put a hex on Matthias. This part is a

little gruesome. Apologies. Rudolph baptized a dog and then killed it, hoping that Matthias would suffer a similar tragedy, and even witnessed ritual sex in a mass magic circle in an attempt to reverse his bad fortune. In sixteen twelve, Rudolf caught a bad case of bronchitis and his legs started to swell. Physicians told him not to put shoes on, but Rudolf didn't listen because he insisted on still going to the Kunstkamer to see his collection, the only thing

that still gave him pleasure. After a while, his legs had swollen so much that he couldn't take his shoes off for days, and he developed gangreen. He died a few days later of those complications. It turned out that Rudolf's death aligned with at least one of his court astrologer's predictions. One astrologer pointed out that Rudolf and his beloved pet Lion had a similar star chart and forecasted

that they would die within day of each other. Sure enough, Rudolf's pet Lion had died just three days before Rudolph did. Seemingly terrified of the vengeful spirit of his dead brother, Matthias refused to pay his respects to Rudolph's corpse. He had similarly dismissive attitudes towards Rudolf's achievements. He fired most of the scholars, artists, and alchemists Rudolf had supported over his rule, and moved the Imperial court officially back to Vienna.

Matthias and his youngest brother, Maximilian took a few paintings from the Kunstkamer, but left most of it to get pillaged by various merchants. Only a fraction of Rudolf's vast collection has been saved. Given the tragic ending of his story, it's easy to see Rudolf as a failure. He was a superstitious, spacey, timid ruler who was ill equipped to

handle the demands of the throne. It's hard to rationalize Rudolph's obsession with the occult and his fruitless pursuit for eternal life, and easy to dismiss the real work he sponsored, especially because a century later the Enlightenment would undermine the scholarly achievements of the Rudolphine court. The enlightenments most archetypal figures. Descartes and Newton established that the world is reducible to what can be observed and logically deduced, which is now

the foundation of modern science. This is not to say that Rudolph's occult beliefs were particularly out there for the time. Plenty of respected scientists practiced alchemy on the side, including Isaac Newton, who had a fascination with alchemy that dominated the back half of his life. But the consequences of Rudolph's fixation on the supernatural were so dire that they

threatened to overshadow the rest of his legacy. His political inaction stoked tensions that would lead to the Thirty Years War, one of the deadliest conflicts in European history. Meanwhile, Rudolf's greatest achievement, arguably the Kunstkamer itself, has been lost to time. All that remains of it is an inventory, a list of the many, many objects that were once inside, along with whatever those who rated it had cared to preserve. But those same qualities that probably led to Rudolph's downfall

had made his court vibrant and unique. Rudolf never questioned the value of art and knowledge. While he had his, let's say, quirks, he paid the artists and scientists that set up shop in his palace, and he had deep respect for their work. Rudolf's utter devotion to knowledge and to the people who produced it allowed both to flourish. Rudolf's kcomer may have looked haphazard, but it did have an organizational principle. It wanted to surprise and delight in

exposing that which was once hidden. The randomness heightened the pleasure of finding something you might not expect by opening a cabinet or peering around the corner, whether it was an allegory that explains a painting or a map of the planet that could predict the future. Rudolph's passion for discovering hidden meanings was infectious. You can still feel Rudolph's

whimsy and carry out through the artworks he commissioned. One of these is a portrait of Rudolph as Vertumnus, the Roman god of the seasons, a painting by Giuseppe Arsimbaldo. This is no standard portrait. In fact, you might have actually seen this portrait and not known it was of Rudolf. Archimbaldo paints a Rudolf constructed out of fruits and vegetables, with a pair for a nose, apples for cheeks, blueberries

for eyes, grapes for hair, and cabbage for shoulders. The portrait shows Rudolf not as a recluse, or as a savior, or even a human being, but as nature itself in all of its beauty and abundance. This is what Rudolph wanted, after all, to transcend the chaos of everyday existence and find the meaning of life, absurd as it is in its pure form. That's the story of Rudolf and his Kunstkamer. But stick around to hear about how Rudolph's love of astrology led to the discovery of some of the most

fundamental laws of physics. The most famous of Rudolph's court astronomers was Johannes Kepler. Kepler had been brought to Prague as an assistant to Rudolph's head astrologer, Tico Brahe. Unlike Tico, whose dire predictions sent Rudolph spiraling, Kepler was more interested in formulating the laws that governed celestial bodies movement in space. Kepler had bad eyesight, so he couldn't map planets like

Brahi did. Instead, his strength was in mathematics. He wanted to find out what caused the planet to move in certain patterns at certain speeds. Kepler mostly stayed under the radar, letting Brahi deal with Rudolph's whims. After Brahie's death, an unfortunate urination incident that you can hear about in our episode that we've done on Brahi and Rudolph's brief experiment in attempting to bring Brahi back to life, Rudolph turned

his attention to Kepler, naming him the new Imperial Mathematician. Kepler, like Brahi before him, had to give Rudolph personalized star charts in addition to continuing his scholarly work. Kepler didn't necessarily mind Like many astronomers at the time, He believed in astrology's ability to explain people's personalities and futures, but he also recognized that astrology was vulnerable to grifters that

manipulated their readings for their own personal gain. Because of Rudolph's credulity, Kepler wrote in sixteen eleven, I hold that astrology must not only be banished from the Senate, but also from the heads of all those who wish to advise the Emperor in his best interests, it must be kept entirely out of his sight. Rudolph didn't follow Kepler's advice, and Kepler still acted as one of Rudolph's personal astrologers.

Kepler tended to use astrology to hype up his patron a strategy that allowed him to stay in Rudolph's good graces during his time under Rudolph's patronage. When he wasn't doing star charts, Kepler was wildly productive, producing thirty astronomers called treatises. In one of them, Astronomia Nova, he found that Earth's orbit was elliptical around the Sun. In the introduction to Astronomy and Nova, Kepler explains how Rudolph's astrological

profile made him a particularly powerful ruler. Kepler's reading was so flattering and effective that Galileo might have actually ripped him off. A year after Astronomy and Nova came out, Galileo dedicated his Astronomical treatise to Rudolph and included a lengthy appreciation of Rudolph's star chart that was so similar

to Coupler's that some scholars think Galileo plagiarized it. This is not to say that Rudolf and Kepler didn't have their disagreements, especially because Rudolf rarely paid Kepler on time and sometimes withheld payments and bonuses because of the Empire's financial trouble. But Keupler appreciated Rudolph's patronage. He described Rudolph as a star around which he orbited, like the Earth around the sun. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio

and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

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