448 GERMANY. 



and the popes. From these, in the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, arose the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines, of which the 

 former was attached to the pope, and the latter to the emperor ; and 

 both, by their violence and inveteracy, tended to disquiet the empire 

 for several ages. The emperors too were often at war with the Turks; 

 and sometimes the German princes, as happens in all elective king- 

 doms, with one another about the succession. But what more deserves 

 the attention of a judicious reader than all those noisy but uninterest- 

 ing disputes, is the progress of government in Germany, which was, 

 in some measure, opposite to that of the other kingdoms of Europe, 

 When the empire raised by Charlemagne fell asunder, all the dif- 

 ferent independent princes assumed the right of election ; and those 

 now distinguished by the name of electors had no peculiar or legal 

 influence in appointing a successor to the imperial throne ; they were 

 only the officers of the king's household, his secretary, his steward, 

 chaplain, marshal, or master of his horse, &c. By degrees, as they 

 lived near the king's person, and, like all other princes, had indepen- 

 dent territories belonging to them, they increased their influence and 

 authority ; and in the reign of Otho III, of the house of Saxony, in 

 the year 984, acquired the sole right of electing the emperor.* Thus, 

 while, in other kingdoms of Europe, the dignity of the great lords, 

 who were all originally allodial or independent barons, was diminished 

 by the power of the king, as in France, and by the influence of the 

 people, as in Great Britain ; in Germany, on the other hand, the power 

 of the electors was raised upon the ruins of the emperor's supremacy, 

 and of the jurisdiction of the people. Otho I, having, in the year 962, 

 united Italy to the empire of Germany, procured a decree from the 

 clergy, that he and his successors should have the power of nominat- 

 ing the pope, and of granting investitures to bishops. Henry V, a 

 weak and wicked prince, in the year 1122 surrendered up the right 

 of investiture and other powers, to the disgrace of the imperial dig- 

 nity ; but pope Benedict XII, refusing absolution to Louis V, of 

 Bavaria, in 1338, it was declared, in the diet of the empire, that the 

 majority of suffrages of the electoral college should confer the empire 

 without the consent of the pope, and that he had no superiority over 

 the emperor, nor any right to reject or to approve of elections. In 

 1438, Albert II, archduke of Austria, was elected emperor, and the 

 imperial dignity continued in the male line of that family for three 

 hundred years. One of his successors, Maximilian, married the 

 heiress of Charles duke of Burgundy, whereby Burgundy, and the 

 seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, were annexed to the house 

 of Austria. Charles V, grandson of Maximilian, and heir to the king- 

 dom of Spain in right of his mother, was elected emperor in the year 

 1519. Under him Mexico and Peru were conquered by the Spa- 

 niards : and in his reign happened the reformation of religion in 

 several parts of Germany ; which, however, was not confirmed by 

 public authority till the year 1648, by the treaty of Westphalia, and 

 in the reign of Ferdinand III. The reign of Charles V, was con- 

 tinually disturbed by his wars with the German princes, and the 

 French king, Francis I. Though successful in the beginning of his 

 reign, his good fortune toward the conclusion of it began to forsake 



" Wiquefort says, that nothing was settled as to the number of electors, or the 

 electoral dignity, till Charles IV, who was chosen emperor in 1347, and made that 

 famous constitution for the election of emperors called the Golden Bull. 



