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 vindicated for itself by the excellency of the Roman Empire, as a matter of singular prerogative, that it should not descend per sanguinis propaginem, sed per principum electionem.

The accessions of Conrad II. (see Wipo, Vita Cuonradi, c. 1-2), of Lothair II. (see Narratio de electione Lotharii, M.G.H., Scriptt. xii. p. 510), of Conrad III. (see Otto of Freising, Chronicon, vii. 22) and of Frederick I. (see Otto of Freising, Gesta Frid. ii. 1) had all been marked by an element, more or less pronounced, of election. That element is perhaps most considerable in the case of Lothair, who had no rights of heredity to urge. Here we read of ten princes being selected from the princes of the various duchies, to whose choice the rest promise to assent, and of these ten selecting three candidates, one of whom, Lothair, is finally chosen (apparently by the whole assembly) in a somewhat tumultuary fashion. In this case the electoral assembly would seem to be, in the last resort, the whole diet of all the princes. But a de facto pre-eminence in the act of election is already, during the 12th century, enjoyed by the three Rhenish archbishops, probably because of the part they afterwards played at the coronation, and also by the dukes of the great duchies—possibly because of the part they too played, as vested for the time with the great offices of the household, at the coronation feast. Thus at the election of Lothair it is the archbishop of Mainz who conducts the proceedings; and the election is not held to be final until the duke of Bavaria has given his assent. The fact is that, votes being weighed by quality as well as by quantity (see ), the votes of the archbishops and dukes, which would first be taken, would of themselves, if unanimous, decide the election. To prevent tumultuary elections, it was well that the election should be left exclusively with these great dignitaries; and this is what, by the middle of the 13th century, had eventually been done.

The chaos of the interregnum from 1198 to 1212 showed the way for the new departure; the chaos of the great interregnum (1250–1273) led to its being finally taken. The decay of the great duchies, and the narrowing of the class of princes into a close corporation, some of whose members were the equals of the old dukes in power, introduced difficulties and doubts into the practice of election which had been used in the 12th century. The contested election of the interregnum of 1198–1212 brought these difficulties and doubts into strong relief. The famous bull of Innocent III. (Venerabilem), in which he decided for Otto IV. against Philip of Swabia, on the ground that, though he had fewer votes than Philip, he had a majority of the votes of those ad quos principaliter spectat electio, made it almost imperative that there should be some definition of these principal electors. The most famous attempt at such a definition is that of the Sachsenspiegel, which was followed, or combated, by many other writers in the first half of the 13th century. Eventually the contested election of 1257 brought light and definition. Here we find seven potentates acting—the same seven whom the Golden Bull recognizes in 1356; and we find these seven described in an official letter to the pope, as principes vocem in hujusmodi electione habentes, qui sunt septem numero. The doctrine thus enunciated was at once received. The pope acknowledged it in two bulls (1263); a cardinal, in a commentary on the bull Venerabilem of Innocent III., recognized it about the same time; and the erection of statues of the seven electors at Aix-la-Chapelle gave the doctrine a visible and outward expression.

By the date of the election of Rudolph of Habsburg (1273) the seven electors may be regarded as a definite body, with an acknowledged right. But the definition and the acknowledgment were still imperfect. (1) The composition of the electoral body was uncertain in two respects. The duke of Bavaria claimed as his right the electoral vote of the king of Bohemia; and the practice of partitio in electoral families tended to raise further difficulties about the exercise of the vote. The Golden Bull of 1356 settled both these questions. Bohemia (of which Charles IV., the author of the Golden Bull, was himself the king) was assigned the electoral vote in preference to Bavaria; and a provision annexing the electoral vote to a definite territory, declaring that territory indivisible, and regulating its descent by the rule of primogeniture instead of partition, swept away the old difficulties which the custom of partition had raised. After 1356 the seven electors are regularly the three Rhenish archbishops, Mainz, Cologne and Trier, and four lay magnates, the palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia; the three former being vested with the three archchancellorships, and the four latter with the four offices of the royal household (see ). (2) The rights of the seven electors, in their collective capacity as an electoral college, were a matter of dispute with the papacy. The result of the election, whether made, as at first, by the princes generally or, as after 1257, by the seven electors exclusively, was in itself simply the creation of a German king—an electio in regem. But since 962 the German king was also, after coronation by the pope, Roman emperor. Therefore the election had a double result: the man elected was not only electus in regem, but also promovendus ad imperium. The difficulty was to define the meaning of the term promovendus. Was the king elect inevitably to become emperor? or did the promotio only follow at the discretion of the pope, if he thought the king elect fit for promotion? and if so, to what extent, and according to what standard, did the pope judge of such fitness? Innocent III. had already claimed, in the bull Venerabilem, (1) that the electors derived their power of election, so far as it made an emperor, from the Holy See (which had originally “translated” the Empire from the East to the West), and (2) that the papacy had a jus et auctoritas examinandi personam electam in regem et promovendam ad imperium. The latter claim he had based on the fact that he anointed, consecrated and crowned the emperor—in other words, that he gave a spiritual office according to spiritual methods, which entitled him to inquire into the fitness of the recipient of that office, as a bishop inquires into the fitness of a candidate for ordination. Innocent had put forward this claim as a ground for deciding between competing candidates: Boniface VIII. pressed the claim against Albert I. in 1298, even though his election was unanimous; while John XXII. exercised it in its harshest form, when in 1324 he excommunicated Louis IV. for using the title and exerting the rights even of king without previous papal confirmation. This action ultimately led to a protest from the electors themselves, whose right of election would have become practically meaningless, if such assumptions had been tolerated. A meeting of the electors (Kurverein) at Rense in 1338 declared (and the declaration was reaffirmed by a diet at Frankfort in the same year) that postquam aliquis eligitur in Imperatorem sive Regem ab Electoribus Imperii concorditer, vel majori parte eorundem, statim ex sola electione est Rex verus et Imperator Romanus censendus nec Papae sive Sedis Apostolicae  approbatione  indiget. The doctrine thus positively affirmed at Rense is negatively reaffirmed in the Golden Bull, in which a significant silence is maintained in regard to papal rights. But the doctrine was not in practice followed: Sigismund himself did not venture to dispense with papal approbation.

By the end of the 14th century the position of the electors, both individually and as a corporate body, had become definite and precise. Individually, they were distinguished from all other princes, as we have seen, by the indivisibility of their territories and by the custom of primogeniture which secured that indivisibility; and they were still further distinguished by the fact that their person, like that of the emperor himself, was protected by the law of treason, while their territories were only subject to the jurisdiction of their own courts. They were independent territorial sovereigns; and their position was at once the envy and the ideal of the other princes of Germany. Such had been the policy of Charles IV.; and thus had he, in the Golden Bull, sought to magnify the seven electors, and himself