Leopold V
Archduke of Austria; holder of several bishoprics (reigning prince-archbishop of Passau and Strasbourg); 1619–1630 governor of Tyrol, from 1630 ruler of Tyrol and the Austrian Forelands to his death in 1632
Born in Graz on 9 October 1586
Died in Schwaz in Tyrol on 13 September 1632
The second son of Charles II of Inner Austria, he was originally destined for a career in the Church and became Bishop of Passau and Strasbourg without having been ordained a priest. Ambitious but not particularly talented politically, he took the side of Rudolf II in the Habsburg Bruderzwist (fraternal quarrel), but did him more harm than good on account of a string of disastrous decisions. In 1625 he resigned from his ecclesiastical offices and a year later married Claudia de’ Medici. In 1630 his brother Emperor Ferdinand II finally assigned him the regency of Tyrol and the Vorlande (the western regions), where he founded a collateral line of the Habsburgs.
