Predecessors
Members of the House of Austria, the Habsburg dynasty, for centuries have been elected Holy Roman Emperors and mostly resided in Vienna. That's why the term "Austrian emperor" may occur in texts dealing with the time before 1804, when no Austrian Empire existed. In these cases the word Austria always means the dynasty, not the country. A special case was Empress Maria Theresa; she bore the imperial title as the wife of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, but she herself was the monarch of the Austrian Hereditary Lands including Bohemia and Hungary.
Read more about this topic: Emperor Of Austria
Famous quotes containing the word predecessors:
“No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms.”
—Sir Peter Frederick Strawson (b. 1919)
“Human development is a form of chronological unfairness, since late-comers are able to profit by the labors of their predecessors without paying the same price.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“I recognize in [my readers] a specific form and individual property, which our predecessors called Pantagruelism, by means of which they never take anything the wrong way that they know to stem from good, honest and loyal hearts.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)