Managing an Imperial Household: Empress Maria of Austria as financial Agent (1548-1581)

Abstract

Maria of Austria (1528-1603), the eldest daughter of Emperor Charles V and Isabel of Portugal, was the highest-ranking woman in Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century and she had to look the richest, too. This study analyzes her threefold economic management means and strategies: first, the collection and administration of allotted funds through her own network of financial agents; second, her management of ordinary incomes to fund her household and patronage; third, her extraordinary recourse to heavy debt for financing the campaign of her son Archduke Ernest to the Polish throne (1573-1576). It is argued that she developed with these elements the first global financial system for funding a female household.