The text of the Golden Bull consists of a prologue and of thirty-one chapters. Some lines of verse invoking the aid of Almighty God are followed by a rhetorical statement of the evils which arise from discord and division, illustrations being taken from Adam, who was divided from obedience and thus fell, and from Helen of Troy who was divided from her husband. The early chapters are mainly concerned with details of the elaborate ceremonies which are to be observed on the occasion of an election. The number of electors is fixed at seven, the duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, not the duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, receiving the Saxon vote, and the count palatine, not the duke of Bavaria, obtaining the vote of the Wittelsbachs. The electors were arranged in order of precedence thus: the archbishops of Mainz, of Trier and of Cologne, the king of Bohemia, qui inter electores laicos ex regiae dignitatis fastigio jure et merito obtinet primatiam, the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony and the margrave of Brandenburg. The three archbishops were respectively arch-chancellors of the three principal divisions of the Empire, Germany, Arles and Italy, and the four secular electors each held an office in the imperial household, the functions of which they were expected to discharge on great occasions. The king of Bohemia was the arch-cupbearer, the count palatine was the arch-steward (dapifer), the duke of Saxony was arch-marshal, and the margrave of Brandenburg was arch-chamberlain. The work of summoning the electors and of presiding over their deliberations fell to the archbishop of Mainz, but if he failed to discharge this duty the electors were to assemble without summons within three months of the death of a king. Elections were to be held at Frankfort; they were to be decided by a majority of votes, and the subsequent coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle was to be performed by the archbishop of Cologne. During a vacancy in the Empire the work of administering the greater part of Germany was entrusted to the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony being responsible, however, for the government of Saxony, or rather for the districts ubi Saxonica jura servantur.
The chief result of the bull was to add greatly to the power of the electors; for, to quote Bryce (Holy Roman Empire), it “confessed and legalized the independence of the electors and the powerlessness of the crown.” To these princes were given sovereign rights in their dominions, which were declared indivisible and were to pass according to the rule of primogeniture. Except in extreme cases, there was to be no appeal from the sentences of their tribunals, and they were confirmed in the right of coining money, of taking tolls, and in other privileges, while conspirators against their lives were to suffer the penalties of treason. One clause gave special rights and immunities to the king of Bohemia, who, it must be remembered, at this time was Charles himself, and others enjoined the observance of the public peace. Provision was made for an annual meeting of the electors, to be held at Metz four weeks after Easter, when matters pro bono et salute communi were to be discussed. This arrangement, however, was not carried out, although the electors met occasionally. Another clause forbade the cities to receive Pfahlbürger, i.e. forbade them to take men dwelling outside their walls under their protection. It may be noted that there is no admission whatever that the election of a king needs confirmation from the pope.
The Golden Bull was thus a great victory for the electors, but it weakened the position of the German king and was a distinct humiliation for the other princes and for the cities. The status of those rulers who did not obtain the electoral privilege was lowered by this very fact, and the regulations about the Pfahlbürger, together with the prohibition of new leagues and associations, struck a severe blow at the cities. The German kings were elected according to the conditions laid down in the bull until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. At first the document was known simply as the Lex Carolina; but gradually the name of the Book with the Golden Bull came into use, and the present elliptical title was sufficiently established by 1417 to be officially employed in a charter by King Sigismund. The original autograph was committed to the care of the elector of Mainz, and it was preserved in the archives at Mainz till 1789. Official transcripts were probably furnished to each of the seven electors at the time of the promulgation, and before long many of the other members of the Empire secured copies for themselves. The transcript which belonged to the elector of Trier is preserved in the state archives at Stuttgart, that of the elector of Cologne in the court library at Darmstadt, and that of the king of Bohemia in the imperial archives at Vienna. Berlin, Munich and Dresden also boast the possession of an electoral transcript; and the town of Kitzingen has a contemporary copy in its municipal archives. There appears, however, to be good reason to doubt the genuineness of most of these so-called original transcripts. But perhaps the best known example is that of Frankfort-on-Main, which was procured from the imperial chancery in 1366, and is adorned with a golden seal like the original. Not only was it regularly quoted as the indubitable authority in regard to the election of the emperors in Frankfort itself, but it was from time to time officially consulted by members of the Empire.
The manuscript consists of 43 leaves of parchment of medium quality, each measuring about 101⁄8 in. in height by 71⁄8 in breadth. The seal is of the plate and wax type. On the obverse appears a figure of the emperor seated on his throne, with the sceptre in his right hand and the globe in his left; a shield, with the crowned imperial eagle, occupies the space on the one side of the throne, and a corresponding shield, with the crowned Bohemian lion with two tails, occupies the space on the other side; and round the margin runs the legend, Karolus quartus divina favente clementia, Romanorum imperator semper Augustus et Boëmiae rex. On the reverse is a castle, with the words Aurea Roma on the gate, and the circumscription reads, Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi. The original Latin text of the bull was printed at Nuremberg by Friedrich Creussner in 1474, and a second edition by Anthonius Koburger (d. 1532) appeared at the same place in 1477. Since that time it has been frequently reprinted from various manuscripts and collections. M. Goldast gave the Palatine text, compared with those of Bohemia and Frankfort, in his Collectio constitutionum et legum imperialium (Frankfort, 1613). Another is to be found in De comitiis imperii of O. Panvinius, and a third, of unknown history, is prefixed to the Codex recessuum Imperii (Mainz, 1599, and again 1615). The Frankfort text appeared in 1742 as Aurea Bulla secundum exemplar originale Frankfurtense, edited by W. C. Multz, and the text is also found in J. J. Schmauss, Corpus juris publici, edited by R. von Hommel (Leipzig, 1794), and in the Ausgewählte Urkunden zur Erläuterung der Verfassungsgeschichte Deutschlands im Mittelalter, edited by W. Altmann and E. Bernheim (Berlin, 1891, and again 1895). German translations, none of which, however, had any official authority, were published at Nuremberg about 1474, at Venice in 1476, and at Strassburg in 1485. Among the earlier commentators on the document are H. Canisius and J. Limnaeus who wrote In Auream Bullam (Strassburg, 1662). The student will find a good account of the older literature on the subject in C. G. Biener’s Commentarii de origine et progressu legum juriumque Germaniae (1787-1795). See also J. D. von Olenschläger, Neue Erläuterungen der Guldenen Bulle (Frankfort and Leipzig, 1766); H. G. von Thulemeyer, De Bulla Aurea, Argentea, &c. (Heidelberg, 1682); J. St Pütter, Historische Entwickelung der heutigen Staatsverfassung des teutschen Reichs (Göttingen, 1786-1787), and O. Stobbe, Geschichte der deutschen Rechtsquellen (Brunswick, 1860-1864). Among the more modern works may be mentioned: E. Nerger, Die Goldne Bulle nach ihrem Ursprung (Göttingen, 1877), O. Hahn, Ursprung und Bedeutung der Goldnen Bulle (Breslau, 1903); and M. G. Schmidt, Die staatsrechtliche Anwendung der Goldnen Bulle (Halle, 1894). There is a valuable contribution to the subject in the Quellensammlung zur Geschichte der deutschen Reichsverfassung, edited by K. Zeumer (Leipzig, 1904), and another by O. Harnack in his Das Kurfürsten Kollegium bis zur Mitte des 14ten Jahrhunderts (Giessen, 1883). There is an English translation of the bull in E. F. Henderson’s Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London, 1903).
(A. W. H.*)
GOLDEN-EYE, a name indiscriminately given in many parts of Britain to two very distinct species of ducks, from the rich yellow colour of their irides. The commonest of them—the Anas fuligula of Linnaeus and Fuligula cristata of most modern ornithologists—is, however, usually called by English writers the tufted duck, while “golden-eye” is reserved in books for the A. clangula and A. glaucion of Linnaeus, who did not know that the birds he so named were but examples of the same species, differing only in age or sex; and to this day many fowlers perpetuate a like mistake, deeming the “Morillon,” which is the female or young male, distinct from the “Golden-eye” or “Rattle-wings” (as from its noisy flight they oftener call it), which is the adult male. This species belongs to the group known as diving ducks, and is the type of the very well-marked genus Clangula of later systematists, which, among other differences, has the posterior end of the sternum prolonged so as to extend considerably over, and, we may not unreasonably suppose, protect the belly—a character possessed in a still greater degree by the mergansers (Merginae), while the males also exhibit in the extraordinarily developed bony labyrinth of their trachea and its midway enlargement another resemblance to the members of the same subfamily. The golden-eye, C. glaucion of modern writers, has its home in the northern parts of both hemispheres, whence in winter it migrates southward; but as it is one of the ducks that constantly resorts to hollow trees for the purpose of breeding it hardly transcends the limit of the Arctic forests on either continent. So well known is this habit to the people of the northern districts of Scandinavia, that they very commonly devise artificial nest-boxes for its accommodation and their own profit. Hollow logs of wood are prepared, the top and bottom closed, and a hole cut in the side. These are affixed to the trunks of living trees in suitable places, at a convenient distance from the ground, and, being readily occupied by the birds in the breeding season, are regularly robbed, first of the numerous eggs, and finally of the down they contain, by those who have set them up.
The adult male golden-eye is a very beautiful bird, mostly black above, but with the head, which is slightly crested, reflecting rich green lights, a large oval white patch under each eye and elongated white scapulars; the lower parts are wholly white and the feet bright orange, except the webs, which are dusky. In the female and young male, dark brown replaces the black, the cheek-spots are indistinct and the elongated white scapulars wanting. The golden-eye of North America has been by some authors deemed to differ, and has been named C. americana, but apparently on insufficient grounds. North America, however, has, in common with Iceland, a very distinct species, C. islandica, often called Barrow’s duck, which is but a rare straggler to the continent of Europe, and never, so far as known, to Britain. In Iceland and Greenland it is the only habitual representative of the genus, and it occurs from thence to the Rocky Mountains. In breeding-habits it differs from the commoner species, not placing its eggs in tree-holes; but how far this difference is voluntary may be doubted, for in the countries it frequents trees are wanting. It is a larger and stouter bird, and in the male the white cheek-patches take a more crescentic form, while the head is glossed with purple rather than green, and the white scapulars are not elongated. The New World also possesses a third and still more beautiful species of the genus in C. albeola, known in books as the buffel-headed duck, and to American fowlers as the “spirit-duck” and “butter-ball”—the former name being applied from its rapidity in diving, and the latter from its exceeding fatness in autumn. This is of small size, but the lustre of the feathers in the male is most brilliant, exhibiting a deep plum-coloured gloss on the head. It breeds in trees, and is supposed to have occurred more than once in Britain.
(A. N.)