Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/42

 powers and rank of the electors. It makes the Count Palatine and the Duke of Saxony the vicars of the Empire during any vacancy of the imperial throne.

II. Maximilian I., who died in 1519, instituted an imperial chamber of justice (Reichskammergericht), a kind of supreme court for the trial of cases between the independent members of the Empire, and having also, in some few other matters, an appellate jurisdiction, to take the place partly of those courts previously held by the Emperor himself or the Count Palatine. This gave rise to a necessity for imperial counsellors (Reichshofrithe), who also sometimes exercised judicial functions. The court varied in the numbers of the judges associated with its chief, to make out a full bench, though sixteen may be taken as the number which sometimes made up the court. Its seat was at first at Worms, afterward at Spire. It became important as connected with the history of the Reformation.

III. At the election of each Emperor there was made with him a solemn. compact (Wahlcapitulation). We may take that of Charles V., who held the reins of the imperial government during thirty-nine years of the Reformation (1519–1558), as a specimen of these capitulations. This consisted of thirty specifications, in substance as follows: He was to execute the laws, make no new ones, and impose no taxes except by the action of the Diet; he was to form no alliances without the concurrence of the electors; he might bring no foreign troops into the Empire, and hold no Diet outside of it; he agreed to appoint none but Germans to office, to protect the States against the See of Rome and place no State under