George, Duke of Saxony
Duke of Saxony (1471-1539)
George the Bearded (German: Georg der Bärtige; 27 August 1471, Meissen – 17 April 1539, Dresden) was Duke of Saxony from 1500 to 1539 and was known for his strong opposition to the Reformation. While the Ernestine line accepted Lutheranism, the Albertines, led by George, resisted religious change. Although he tried to prevent a Lutheran succession, the Act of Settlement of 1499 ensured that, after his death in 1539, Henry IV—a Lutheran—became duke and introduced Lutheranism as the official state religion of the Albertine territories.
George was also a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Life
His father was Albert the Brave of Saxony, founder of the Albertine line of the Wettin family, his mother was Sidonie, daughter of George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia. Elector Frederick the Wise, a member of the Ernestine branch of the same family, known for his protection of Luther, was a cousin of Duke George.
George, as the eldest son, received an excellent training in theology and other branches of learning, and was thus much better educated than most of the princes of his day.
As early as 1488, when his father was in East Frisia fighting on behalf of the emperor, George was regent of the ducal possessions, which included the Margraviate of Meissen with the cities of Dresden and Leipzig.
He is buried with his wife Barbara in the purpose-built Georgskapelle in Meissen Cathedral. The room contains a magnificent altarpiece by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
“George, Duke of Saxony” enters the record as duke of Saxony (1471-1539). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what George, Duke and Saxony can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “George, Duke of Saxony” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.