(F. R. C.)
[1] This name appears in a great variety of forms—Kwi, Ekwi, Okwi, Oji, Odschi, Otsui, Tyi, Twi, Tschi, Chwee or Chee.
[2] Blue Book on Africa (Western Coast) (1865), p. 233.
GOLDEN, a city and the county-seat of Jefferson county, Colorado, U.S.A., on Clear Creek (formerly called the Vasquez fork of the South Platte), about 14 m. W. by N. of Denver. Pop. (1900) 2152; (1910) 2477. Golden is a residential suburb of Denver, served by the Colorado & Southern, the Denver & Intermountain (electric), and the Denver & North-Western Electric railways. It is about 5700 ft. above sea-level. About 600 ft. above the city is Castle Rock, with an amusement park, and W. of Golden is Lookout Mountain, a natural park of 3400 acres. About 1 m. S. of the city is a state industrial school for boys, and in Golden is the Colorado State School of Mines (opened 1874), which offers courses in mining engineering and metallurgical engineering. The Independent Pyritic Smelter is at Golden, and among the city’s manufactures are pottery, firebrick and tile, made from clays found near by, and flour. There are deposits of coal, copper and gold in the vicinity. Truck-farming and the growing of fruit are important industries in the neighbourhood. The first settlement here was a gold mining camp, established in 1859, and named in honour of Tom Golden, one of the pioneer prospectors. The village was laid out in 1860, and Golden was incorporated as a town in 1865 and was chartered as a city in 1870. Golden was made the capital of Colorado Territory in 1862, and several sessions (or parts of sessions) of the Assembly were held here between 1864 and 1868, when the seat of government was formally established at Denver; the territorial offices of Colorado, however, were at Golden only in 1866-1867.
GOLDEN BULL (Lat. Bulla Aurea), the general designation of any charter decorated with a golden seal or bulla, either owing to the intrinsic importance of its contents, or to the rank and dignity of the bestower or the recipient. The custom of thus giving distinction to certain documents is said to be of Byzantine origin, though if this be the case it is somewhat strange that the word employed as an equivalent for golden bull in Byzantine Greek should be the hybrid χρυσόβουλλον (cf. Codinus Curopalates, ὁ μέγας λογοθέτης διατάττει τὰ παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως ἀποστελλόμενα προστάγματα καὶ χρυσόβουλλα πρός τε Ῥήγας, Σούλτανας, καὶ τοπάρχους; and Anna Comnena, Alexiad, lib. iii. διὰ χρυσοβουλίου λόγου; lib. viii., χρυσόβουλον λόγον). In Germany a Golden Bull is mentioned under the reign of Henry I. the Fowler in Chronica Cassin. ii. 31, and the oldest German example, if it be genuine, dates from 983. At first the golden seal was formed after the type of a solid coin, but at a later date, while the golden surface presented to the eye was greatly increased, the seal was really composed of two thin metal plates filled in with wax. The number of golden bulls issued by the imperial chancery must have been very large; the city of Frankfort, for example, preserves no fewer than eight.
The name, however, has become practically restricted to a few documents of unusual political importance, the golden bull of the Empire, the golden bull of Brabant, the golden bull of Hungary and the golden bull of Milan—and of these the first is undoubtedly the Golden Bull par excellence. The main object of the Golden Bull was to provide a set of rules for the election of the German kings, or kings of the Romans, as they are called in this document. Since the informal establishment of the electoral college about a century before (see [Electors]), various disputes had taken place about the right of certain princes to vote at the elections, these and other difficulties having arisen owing to the absence of any authoritative ruling. The spiritual electors, it is true, had exercised their votes without challenge, but far different was the case of the temporal electors. The families ruling in Saxony and in Bavaria had been divided into two main branches and, as the German states had not yet accepted the principles of primogeniture, it was uncertain which member of the divided family should vote. Thus, both the prince ruling in Saxe-Lauenburg and the prince ruling in Saxe-Wittenberg claimed the vote, and the two branches of the family of Wittelsbach, one settled in Bavaria and the other in the Rhenish palatinate, were similarly at variance, while the duke of Bavaria also claimed the vote at the expense of the king of Bohemia. Moreover, there had been several disputed and double elections to the German crown during the past century. In more than one instance a prince, chosen by a minority of the electors, had claimed to exercise the functions of king, and as often civil war had been the result. Under these circumstances the emperor Charles IV. determined by an authoritative pronouncement to make such proceedings impossible in the future, and at the same time to add to his own power and prestige, especially in his capacity as king of Bohemia.
Having arranged various disputes in Germany, and having in April 1355 secured his coronation in Rome, Charles gave instructions for the bull to be drawn up. It is uncertain who is responsible for its actual composition. The honour has been assigned to Bartolo of Sassoferrato, professor of law at Pisa and Perugia, to the imperial secretary, Rudolph of Friedberg, and even to the emperor himself, but there is no valid authority for giving it to any one of the three in preference to the others. In its first form the bull was promulgated at the diet of Nuremberg on the 10th of January 1356, but it was not accepted by the princes until some modifications had been introduced, and in its final form it was issued at the diet of Metz on the 25th of December following.