RUDOLF or RODOLF II., eldest son of the emperor Maximilian II. of Germany, was b. in 1532 and educated at the.Spanish court by the Jesuits. On the death of his father in 1576 he succeeded to the imperial crown, after having, during the lifetime of his father, been proclaimed king of the Romans. This first reigning namesake of the great progenitor of the Austrian dynasty did not add to the dignity or greatness of the Haps burg family; and the whole of his reign of 36 years was marked by persecutions and intolerance on his side, and by discontent and even insurrection on that of his subjects. His bigotry and intolerance in forbidding Protestants the free exercise of their religion, led them to ally themselves with their co-religionists in the Low Lands and in France (1608), and by implicating the empire in foreign wars, augmented taxation, and increased the monetary difficulties of the state. Rudolf, who was gloomy, taciturn, and bigoted, had not the qualities necessary to secure the goodwill of those around him, and he died, unregretted by his subjects, Jan. 20, 1612, leaving uo issue, and bequeath
ing to his brother Matthias, who succeeded him, an impoverished and distracted state, Rudolf's taste for astrology and the occult sciences, and his anxious desire to discover the philosopher's stone, led him to extend his patronage to Kepler and Tycho Brain;, whose study of astronomy was thought specially to qualify them for that much-coveted discovery; and the patronage which Rudolf extended to the Danish discoverer, when the latter was compelled to leave his own country, through the jealousy of his brother• nobles, has proved one of the few claims possessed by Rudolf to the grateful remem. brance of late times. The important astronomical calculations begun by Tycho, and continued by Kepler, which are known as The Radolphine Tables, derive their name from this emperor, who originally undertook, but subsequently failed, for want of means, to defray the expenses incidental to the undertaking. See Kurz's Geschichtt Oestreichs ureter Kaiser Rudolf (Linz. 1821).