Sigismund

Sigismund of Luxembourg (15 February 1368 – 9 December 1437) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1433 until his death in 1437. As the husband of Mary, Queen of Hungary, he was King of Hungary and Croatia (jure uxoris) from 1387. He was elected King of Germany (King of the Romans) in 1410, and was also King of Bohemia from 1419, as well as prince-elector of Brandenburg (1378–88 and 1411–15). He was the last male member of the House of Luxembourg.

Sigismund was the son of Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and his fourth wife Elizabeth of Pomerania. He married Mary, Queen of Hungary in 1385 and was crowned King of Hungary soon after. He fought to restore and maintain authority to the throne. Mary died in 1395, leaving Sigismund the sole ruler of Hungary.

In 1396, Sigismund led the Crusade of Nicopolis but was decisively defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Afterwards, he founded the Order of the Dragon to fight the Turks and secured the thrones of Croatia, Germany and Bohemia. Sigismund was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Constance (1414–18) that ended the Papal Schism, but which also led to the Hussite Wars that dominated the later period of his life. In 1433, Sigismund was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and ruled until his death in 1437.

Historian Thomas Brady Jr. remarks that Sigismund "possessed a breadth of vision and a sense of grandeur unseen in a German monarch since the thirteenth century". He realised the need to carry out reforms of the empire and the Church at the same time. However, external difficulties, self-inflicted mistakes and the extinction of the Luxembourg male line made this vision unfulfilled. Later, the Habsburgs would inherit this mission and imperial reform was carried out successfully under the reigns of Frederick III and especially his son Maximilian I, although perhaps at the expense of the reform of the Church, partly because Maximilian was not particularly focused on the matter.

In recent years, scholarly interest (especially from East-Central Europe) has grown greatly in the person and reign of Sigismund – the ruler who had gained and led an imperial association almost reaching the size of the later Habsburg Empire – as well as cultural developments associated with his era. The setbacks which have been seen as his major failures (like dealing with the Hussite movement) are now generally considered to be the result of the lack of financial resources and other heavy constraints, rather than personal failings.