Art -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- History
Margaret’s work was apparently finished. All her brother’s children had
been guarded, educated, and married, Eleanore to the King of Portugal,
Isabelle to the King of Denmark, Marie to the King of Hungary, while
Ferdinand who had been educated in Spain had married Anne of Hungary and
received from his brother, the Emperor, the throne of Austria, to which
were added Bohemia and Hungary after the great beating back of the Turks
from Vienna in 1529, since King Louis, husband of Marie, had lost his
life in the terrible disaster of the battle of Mohacs in 1526, when for
the moment the Moslems had been victorious and had threatened all Europe
from the field where 20,000 had laid down their lives in a vain attempt
to stem the heathen tide.
As for her imperial nephew Charles, he was now the unquestioned head of
the Holy Roman Empire and leader of Christendom; on February 24, 1530,
he was solemnly crowned by the Pope, in Bologna, with the Iron Crown of
Lombardy and the crown of Charlemagne. Peace of sorts, had settled on
Europe, and it was a peace of Margaret’s own making. The Lutheran heresy
was sullen and threatening, but thus far there was no actual violence.
There was a pause in the ominous progress of events, and tired,
apprehensive Margaret determined to resign her charge to the Emperor,
who was coming from his crowning to visit her in Malines, and retire to
one of the convents she herself had founded. She had earned the peace
she desired, and a greater peace, which was accorded her by the grace of
God, for on November 30, 1530, she died from an overdose of opium given
her by her physicians in preparation for an operation that had become
necessary, owing to an injury to a foot which had not been properly
treated.
She died as she had lived, thoughtful for others, generous, meek in
spirit, sincerely and devotedly a Catholic. All the Netherlands mourned
for her as a righteous and able governor and, after the imposing funeral
services in Bruges, she was carried through the snow, along the road she
had followed on her wedding journey, thirty years before, to the church
at Brou, where she was placed by the side of the husband, who had been
hers for so few years, and for love of whom she had built the most
beautiful shrine in Europe.
The church at Brou is the last of Gothic art, and Margaret of Austria,
by the love of her people, Margaret of Malines, was the last of the
great and righteous and pious women of the age that had made this art
its own.
With the passing of Margaret, Malines ceased to be the capital of the
Netherlands, but for compensation in some sort it was made an
archbishopric; and though its great palaces have passed with its glory,
the hoarded art and the
[Illustration: A DETAIL FROM THE CHURCH AT BROU]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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