Golden Bull of 1356: How the Holy Roman Emperor Was Elected

The Golden Bull of 1356 was the decree by which Emperor Charles IV fixed the rules for electing the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Proclaimed at Nuremberg in January 1356 and completed at Metz that December, it gave the choice to seven prince-electors voting by majority. It became the empire’s most important constitutional document and remained in force until the empire ended in 1806.

Background: a disputed crown

The Holy Roman Empire, a large and loose realm covering Germany, Bohemia, the Low Countries and parts of Italy, had been an elective monarchy since its early days, a tradition reaching back to Otto I. The German princes chose a King of the Romans, who could then be crowned emperor by the pope.

By the thirteenth century a small group of leading princes had come to dominate the election, but the rules were vague. Who could vote, where and how often led to disputes, and double elections produced rival kings and civil war. The papacy also claimed the right to examine and approve the person elected, which caused bitter conflict with Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria in the 1320s and 1330s.

In 1338, at Rhens on the Rhine, most of the electors declared that a king chosen by them, or by a majority of them, needed no papal confirmation. Charles of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, was himself elected in 1346 as a rival to Louis IV, with papal support. After Louis’s death in 1347 he gradually won general recognition, and on 5 April 1355 he was crowned emperor in Rome. He then set out to put the electoral system on a firm footing.

The decree

Charles presented the first 23 chapters to an imperial diet at Nuremberg, where they were proclaimed on 10 January 1356. Eight further chapters were added at a diet in Metz and published on 25 December 1356. The text is written in Latin and has 31 chapters in all.

Archbishop Gerlach of Nassau of Mainz and the other electors took part in the negotiations, and the decree reflects a bargain: the electors received great privileges in return for a stable and orderly system.

The seven electors

The Golden Bull named seven prince-electors (in German, Kurfürsten):

The choice was not new; these seven had been prominent electors for about a century. What was new was that the list was fixed in law, and rival claims were shut out. Among those excluded were the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria and the Habsburg dukes of Austria.

Main rules

The Golden Bull set out a clear procedure. After an emperor’s death, the Archbishop of Mainz was to summon the electors to Frankfurt within a fixed time. The election was to be held in the church of St Bartholomew, and a candidate needed a simple majority, four votes out of seven. An elector could vote for himself, so a candidate who was already an elector, as Charles was as King of Bohemia, counted his own vote.

The new king was to be crowned at Aachen and to hold his first diet at Nuremberg. While the throne was empty, the Count Palatine and the Duke of Saxony were to act as imperial vicars in their regions.

To prevent disputes over votes, the secular electorates were made indivisible and passed by male primogeniture, meaning inheritance by the eldest son. Electors received extensive rights in their territories, including control of mines, salt deposits, coinage and tolls, and their subjects could not appeal to outside courts. A conspiracy against an elector was to be punished as treason.

The decree also banned leagues of towns made without their lord’s consent and limited the practice of townspeople claiming citizenship of a city while living outside it.

One clause shows the empire’s many languages. The sons of the secular electors, who were expected to speak German, were to learn Italian and the Slavic language, meaning Czech, from the age of seven, so that they could deal with the empire’s different peoples.

Charles IV and his aims

Charles IV was one of the most able rulers of his age. Raised partly at the French court in Paris, he was highly educated, spoke several languages and wrote an autobiography. He preferred diplomacy and law to war, and he used the Golden Bull to make the empire more governable without trying to rebuild a strong central monarchy.

The decree also served his dynasty. As King of Bohemia, Charles held one of the seven votes, and the Bull confirmed Bohemia’s status as the first of the secular electorates. Later he bought the Margraviate of Brandenburg for his family in 1373, giving the house of Luxembourg two electoral votes, and in 1376 he secured the election of his son Wenceslas as King of the Romans during his own lifetime.

Consequences

The Golden Bull ended the era of disputed double elections. From then on, the empire had a clear legal process that the electors and emperors accepted, and the electors became the leading group of princes in the empire, a kind of permanent council.

It also helped turn the empire into a federation of strong territories. The electors were almost sovereign in their lands, and other princes sought similar rights.

Those left out reacted. Rudolf IV of Austria responded in 1358–1359 by having a set of forged charters made, the Privilegium maius, which claimed special status for Austria. Charles IV refused to recognise them, but they were later confirmed by the Habsburg emperor Frederick III in 1453.

Later changes

The college of electors changed during the Thirty Years’ War. In 1623 the Palatine vote was transferred to Bavaria, and in 1648 the Peace of Westphalia restored a new, eighth electorate for the Palatinate. Hanover became the ninth in 1692, recognised by the empire in 1708. Further changes came in 1803, shortly before the empire’s dissolution.

From 1438 the electors almost always chose a Habsburg, so the election became largely a formality, but the procedure of the Golden Bull was followed to the end. The last election, of Francis II, took place in Frankfurt in 1792. The empire was dissolved in August 1806.

Timeline

• 1338: The electors’ declaration at Rhens rejects the need for papal approval.
• 1346, 11 July: Charles of Luxembourg is elected King of the Romans.
• 1355, 5 April: Charles IV is crowned emperor in Rome.
• 1356, 10 January: Chapters 1–23 are proclaimed at Nuremberg.
• 1356, 25 December: Chapters 24–31 are published at Metz.
• 1358–1359: Rudolf IV of Austria has the Privilegium maius forged.
• 1623: The Palatine electorate is transferred to Bavaria.
• 1806, 6 August: The Holy Roman Empire is dissolved.

Why it matters

The Golden Bull gave the Holy Roman Empire a stable constitution for 450 years. It showed how a medieval ruler could settle disputes by written law rather than war, and it shaped the federal character that German politics has kept to the present day. Charles IV’s capital, Prague, still shows the ambition of his reign in monuments such as the Charles Bridge.