For most readers, A.E.I.O.U. It will be nothing more than the vowels of the alphabet or, if it ends with ípsilon, the title of a popular Brazilian song. But you have to look at the detail of the dots between them, which turn those letters into a monogram. Of what exactly? Well, nothing less than a late medieval motto:the one adopted by Frederick III of Habsburg, who occupied the throne of the Holy Roman Empire between 1440 and 1493, being the father of Maximilian I and great-grandfather of Charles V. The meaning of the initials is uncertain and object of much speculation, but it has survived and the Theresianum (Vienna Teresian Military Academy) recovered it in 2017 for its coat of arms.
Frederick III was born in Innsbruck in 1415. He was the son of Ernest I, Archduke of Austria who was nicknamed the Iron , and his second wife, Cimburgia of Masovia, a Polish noblewoman famous for her exceptional strength (it is said that she pulled nails out of the wall without the aid of tools and cracked nuts with her fingers) and for being the one who bequeathed to her descendants the morphological characteristics of the Habsburgs:prognathism, thick lower lip, malocclusion, etc. Frederick lost his father in 1424, thus inheriting the dukedoms of Styria, Carinthia and Carnola at just nine years of age. In this way, he outlined early what was going to be a life of ruler.
In 1440 he would be elected emperor by the German electors, but his great contribution was to unite under his rule most of the territories that belonged to the Habsburgs, as head of that dynasty:in 1457, after the death of Ladislaus the Posthumous heirless, he incorporated Austria into those domains, so that he only lacked Tyrol. However, the scarcity of resources prevented him from carrying out a more ambitious policy to end the opposition of the states with more power and limit the authority of the Pope, hence he had to maintain typically medieval relations with the former and with the Second, he had no choice but to sign a concordat (that of Vienna in 1446) that authorized him to appoint half a dozen bishops.
That agreement, which would last exactly three hundred and sixty years, also allowed the pontiff Nicholas V to crown him emperor in Rome in 1452 (the last one in that city), at the same time that he married Eleanor of Portugal. But his capacity, as we say, was limited and also starting with his own family, since his brother Albert claimed and ended up obtaining Upper Austria (until Frederick recovered it after his death in 1463), along with King Matthias Hunyadi of Hungary made heavy raids and the Ottomans invaded the border areas, all of which advised against establishing the court in a fixed place. In fact, much of the Austrian territory was conquered by the Hungarians, including Vienna itself, and liberation was not achieved until 1490, thanks to the death of Hunyadi and an effective campaign led by Maximilian.
The Swiss Confederation also refused to submit to the emperor, who not only lost the canton of Thurgau in the corresponding war but, in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, had to end up allying with the enemy to face the dangerous rise of the duchy of Burgundy. . The death of the holder of it, Carlos I the Bold , opened the possibility that Federico took possession of it directly or indirectly. It was a very appetizing bite because it included Flanders, Brabant, Franche-Comté, Holland, Namur, Zeeland, Hainaut and Luxembourg.
Finally, the emperor achieved his goal by the second way, the indirect one, marrying his son Maximilian with the only daughter of Carlos, María de Borgoña. Then things changed for the empire, since from now on the rich economic resources of those lands would be available; moreover, the saying Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, get married! But there was a problem:the France of Louis XI also aspired to keep Burgundy and after the ensuing war, favorable to the Gauls, the 1482 Treaty of Arras distributed the territories, granting the French the Burgundian Duchy and Picardy, while leaving the rest to the Habsburgs.
In reality, France took more profit, since the Dauphin was engaged to Margarita, the daughter of Maximilian, who gave Franche-Comté and Artois as her dowry, so that only the Netherlands and Luxembourg remained in imperial hands. As can be seen, by then Frederick III had left political affairs in the hands of his offspring and it would be he who expelled the Ottomans in 1492 from the regions that had been taken from them four decades earlier:Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. The emperor was already suffering from arteriosclerosis and hardly left Vienna, especially after it was necessary to amputate his leg.
He died in the summer of 1493 (curiously, the severed limb was also placed in his coffin) and, with all that has been said so far, it is clear that he never achieved the power that his son would later have, let alone his great-grandson, who at Flanders that he received from his father Felipe el Hermoso he added the Spanish and Italian kingdoms. Still, the prestige of his lineage was already reflected since he was born. The currency discussed at the beginning, the mysterious A.E.I.O.U, was adopted in 1437, when he was Duke of Styria (which was not yet part of Austria at the time) and thus fifteen years before he became Emperor. What did it mean? There are several theories.
A possible explanation was found in 1666 in a book of personal notes of Federico III himself, although there are doubts as to whether it was in his own handwriting. According to that annotation, it was the acronym for Alles Erdreich ist Österreich untertan (The whole world is subject to Austria), which he would have pronounced shortly before he died. In the same political line, there are other interpretations also attributed to Federico with a certain joy and substituting the German for the Latin:Austriae est imperare orbi Universo (Austria rules over the whole world), Austria is an empire optimally united (Austria is the best united empire), Austria erit in orb ultima (Austria will exist until the end of the world), Austriae est imperare orbi Universo (Austria's destiny is to rule the entire world.)
In this context, the word Austria would not have a territorial meaning but would be a reference to the Habsburgs, who were also called Austrias. However, there are also more recent proposals such as that of the German philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy in 1951:Austria Europae Imago, Onus, Unio (Austria is the image and support of the unity of Europe). There are even those who point out possibilities in languages other than Latin, even in English, as the American historian Timothy Snyder did in his book The Red Prince:The Secret Lives of an Archduke of Habsburg , published in 2008:Austria’s empire is our universe (The Austrian Empire is our universe).
However, in another passage of the same document, A.E.I.O.U. they are the initials of the words of the first line of a poem:En, amor electis, iniustis ordinor ultor; sic Fridericus ego meaiurareg (Look, the chosen ones love me, the unjust fear me; that's why I, Federico, govern legitimately). Let each one choose the one he prefers, which is what the emperor did in the opinion of current historians. His grandson Carlos V made it easier with the famous Plus Ultra (Beyond; referring to the obsolescence of the Non plus ultra of the Catholic Monarchs since they arrived in America) or his brother, Ferdinand I, who chose Fiat justitia et pereat mundus (Let justice be done even if the world perishes).