MATTHIAS (1557-1619), holy Roman emperor, the fourth son of the emperor Maximilian II., was born on the 24th of February 1557. He was educated in Germany by the diplomatist Busbecq, while his brother, afterwards the emperor Rudolph II., was trained at the court of Philip II. of Spain. In 1577 Matthias went secretly to the Netherlands, the sovereignty of which he unlawfully assumed; but in 1580 he was compelled to withdraw into private life. He was vain, restless, and ambitious, and intrigued incessantly against the emperor Rudolph, a man of weak character, with a constitutional tendency to insanity. Rudolph passed wholly under the dominion of the Jesuits, and this rendered it easy for Matthias to stir up his Protestant subjects against him. In 1595 Matthias was made regent in Austria, and in 1606 the archdukes recognized him as head of the house of Hapsburg. Rudolph had to relax his hold over one country after another, and in 1611 Matthias was ruler of Hungary, Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, and even Bohemia, whose loyalty the emperor had tried to secure by many concessions, especially by the letter of majesty granting religious freedom to Protestant sects. In 1612, after the death of Rudolph, Matthias was elected emperor; and his reign was not less disturbed than that of his predecessor. The intervention of Turkey in Transylvania led to war, and in 1615 Matthias, being unsupported by the empire and by his own estates, found that he had no alternative but to conclude peace for twenty years on humiliating terms. Protestants and Catholics, bitterly hating each other, formed respectively the Union and the League; and the rising power of the archduke Ferdinand, afterwards emperor, a bigoted prince who became king of Bohemia in 1617 and king of Hungary in 1618, indicated that ...

the Apostle was first in the rank of our Saviour’s disciples, and one of those who continued with him from his baptism to his ascension, Acts i, 21, 22. It is very probable he was of the number of the seventy, as Clemens Alexandrinus and other ancients inform us. We have no particulars of his youth or education, for we may reckon as nothing what is read in Abdias, or Obadiah, concerning this matter. After the ascension of our Lord, the Apostles retiring to Jerusalem in expectation of the effusion of the Holy Ghost, as had been promised, Peter proposed to fill up the place of Judas: to this the disciples agreed. They then presented two persons, Joseph Barsabas, surnamed Justus, and Matthias. The lot falling on Matthias, he was from that time associated with the eleven Apostles. The Greeks believe that Matthias preached and died at Colchis.

MATTHIAS CORVINUS (1443-1490), king of Hun gary, was born at Klausenburg in Transylvania on March 27, 1443, and died at Vienna on April 6, 1490. He was the younger son of John Hunyady (Corvinus) who died in 1456 after having been “governor of Hungary’’from 1446 to 1453. On the death of John, the elder of his two sons (Ladislaus) was executed by command of Ladislaus Posthumus, while Matthias was imprisoned at Prague; but shortly after the king’s own death without issue in 1457, Matthias Hunyady (Corvinus) was elected by the Hungarian magnates to the vacant throne (January 24, 1458). The leading events of his reign are summarized in the article Hungary (vol. xii. p. 368, 369).